If you are feeling exhausted and overwhelmed in your consulting business, you are not alone!
Nonprofit consultants can experience burnout just as surely as folks working full-time nonprofit jobs.
In fact, for consultants, burnout can happen even IF we don’t have a full client roster yet. To build our client pipelines, we need to keep connecting with new people about our work. That means networking, attending events, running webinars, scheduling discovery calls, writing newsletters, preparing scopes of work…and on and on.
Frankly, it can get overwhelming pretty fast. Especially once you add in financial pressures, family pressures, and the often-outsized expectations we put on ourselves and our businesses.
The good news is that getting out of burnout as a consultant IS achievable.
The Good News About Burnout for Consultants
Burnout isn’t caused by one stressor or one deadline. It’s a culmination of many things building on each other and wearing you down.
So, if you’re struggling with burnout, it is essential to first distinguish what you have the power to change vs what is outside of your control.
As consultants, we have a lot more control over our work lives. We can choose our schedules, our services, our pricing, and our clients (learn how in our guide to becoming a nonprofit consultant). We can also be intentional about our mindsets.
At the same time, there are always going to be stressors that are beyond our immediate influence—from inflation to changes in federal policy to causes we care about that are under threat.
But if you look through all the factors contributing to your burnout, there is a good chance many of them are things you can change.
5 Strategies to Tackle Burnout You Can Use RIGHT NOW
Here are some of the top challenges I’ve heard from consultants in our community, and strategies to tackle them.
1) If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your packed schedule, take a look at your calendar and identify what can be cancelled, moved, or turned into an email.
2) If you feel like you’re chasing your tail when it comes to marketing, you may be putting too much effort into too many channels. You don’t have to do everything at once! Take a step back to evaluate where your best and highest-converting client prospects are coming from—and which of your services are most popular. Then focus your energy on those activities, instead of trying to do it all.
3) If client meetings have become time and energy vampires, study up on how to make meetings more efficient (Marie led a great training on meeting management recently). Intake forms, agenda templates, and email templates are great tools to make client communication faster, easier, and more effective.
4) If you’re crushed by too many client deadlines or urgent needs, step back and evaluate the expectations you are setting with clients. You always have the power to reset expectations and norms with new clients and even with current clients. You might be surprised by how many clients are open to adjusting timelines and workplans, especially if it increases efficiency and improves outcomes. Also use the opportunity to consider which of your services have the highest ROI or return on investment—both financial and for replenishing (or sucking) your energy.
5) If you’re constantly anxious and in reaction mode, there is a huge body of research that shows how, with training, we can change our physical and emotional responses to stressors. For example, using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) you can use tools like deep breathing to retrain how your body and mind respond to stress in the moment. You can find lots of free and accessible resources on CBT online, including this one.
You might notice that a lot of these suggestions involve “taking a step back.” That’s because, when we’re in the midst of our work and our lives, we get into response mode or “crisis mentality.” It’s hard to pull yourself out of that mindset but, for turning around burnout, it is essential. And most times it is within your control.
