Are you feeling brain cluttered and overwhelmed? I've noticed in many of my business coaching clients that successful product business owners are becoming tired of the immense amount of noise and diversified content they feel their brand should share across all the social media channels, for their customers to consume.

Often as product entrepreneurs, they feel huge pressure from investors to splash their brand everywhere in the name of "brand awareness" and experience pressure from the world generally to post in order to meet their business growth plans.

Getting some distance from your own brands social media is, in my view actually a very healthy thing to do and a great side benefit?  ....some crystal clear strategic thinking and reflection on how your social media channels are serving your product sales. 

So, how can you achieve a digital detox as a product-based business owner and how will it help you grow faster?

Step 1. Check - Are you allowing too many tools into your life?

If you are anything like most product business entrepreneurs, you've probably downloaded a tonne of different tools and platforms, right?  Or signed up to a varying expanse of competitors newsletters and social media accounts?

By doing this, you are allowing a constant barrage of new content, or new information on the latest method or tool you have signed up to. You may or may not even be using it!  It's just clutter in your already swamped and overwhelmed brain. 

In my experience all that this content barrage creates is a dreadful and constant feeling that you haven’t learnt enough about your industry, or that you aren't "good enough" as a business owner... because your competitors are running harder, faster, better, with more funding etc etc.. than you... 

Enter comparison doom scrolling... directly and indirectly. You are constantly gauging your own "progress" and taking it's temperature against every possible iteration of the universe... 

Phew... I'm exhausted just thinking about it... and all that in turns creates an overwhelming feeling of failure - when none of that is actually true. It also stops you from focusing on what really matters - YOUR business.

We will all have experienced that rush of information overload, when you are sat at the computer - email notifications come flying in, whilst our social media is also pinging away and the phones buzzing off the hook. Our collaboration tools from our busy team then get new notifications and oohhh there's a new online course promoted on Insta that you MUST sign up to....

It all becomes too much.

And where does it leave you?  Well most business owners end up feeling like you want to dive under the covers, hide away from all of that information and noise.

My recommendations for creating space to breathe and think:

• Switch off all email notifications on your desktop
• Edit and review the notifications you get on your phone. Consider turning off social media notifications on your phone for 24 hours and see how it feels!  
• Limit the collaboration tool update notifications you get from your team, to only those essential "boards /tasks " and consider moving to a daily digest style update setting, grouping all the notifications in one simple update, rather than having them interrupting you throughout the day. 
• Put your mobile phone on airplane mode when you are trying to have an hour to yourself to "get the important things done".  People will leave a message or call you back if it is important. 
• Delete all the apps you aren't using or that you KNOW are a distraction (aherm...candy crush we see you)
• Set usage time limits on all the other apps.  For example, if you find yourself getting sucked into scrolling Linkedin updates during a 3pm lull of energy, set the app to a timer of say 15 mins a day and it will kick you out of the app after that point!  Problem solved. 

So how else can we tackle this?

Step 2. Reduce the noise and focus on ONE thing.

Once you've turned off all the bleeps and pings across your workspace, help to reduce the noise further by focusing on just one thing at a time.

No multi-tasking. It's false economy. It doesn't actually work - you'll just skim. 

Pick ONE thing, do it, focus on it until it is done. Then and only then, move onto the next ONE thing. 

My recommended read is ‘The One Thing’ written by Gary Keller - it's a truly groundbreaking book, which helps readers to understand the potential and power of simplicity. This book recognises how overwhelming the constant intrusion of information can be from social media, news sites and email newsletters and how you can be left feeling utterly stressed.

The author Gary Keller works on the notion that to achieve the best results in your business and to become a successful entrepreneur, that you should focus on one thing. Yes, you heard it.  ONE thing. 

Focusing on excelling at ONE thing, rather than trying to juggle EVERYTHING is not as easy as it sounds but the results if you do bring this philosophy into your life are outstanding. Ignore the clutter that comes your way. Tune it out, block it out and stay in your lane, working on your ONE thing. If something isn’t compatible or advancing your ONE thing, it’s irrelevant.

Step 3. Extract Yourself From Social Media Entirely.

This next step is important so that you can create the space required to re-evaluate your brand's use of social media and the impact it has on sales... because lets face it, this is the only reason we are working so hard on promoting our products! Sales and business growth! 

It's time to come up for air, and re-balance with the real physical world.

It is becoming more popular for people to be stepping away from social media these days. We are recognising it for creating unhealthy habits in our life; from comparing our lives and our business success (or not), to watching social media using up valuable time (that we can never get back).

I noticed a couple of things happened to my clients when they gave themselves this space:

• They felt alot less overwhelmed by taking a break.
• They felt more peaceful in themselves - and more in control of their time.
• They realised in many cases that their customers didn't disappear if they stopped posting 5 times a day!  And that actually an alternative, less frequent schedule could still have a good impact. 
• They realised that as business owner, they personally, didn't actually need to be doing this work at all... they could, in fact, delegate all of their social media tasks to someone else. 
• ...but it took being "unhooked" from their social media feed for a few days to help them to feel like they could "let go" of their brand profiles and allow someone else to carry the burden for them. This in turn freed them up for bigger, better business growth activities. 
• Many re-assesed entirely how they used their social media profiles to communicate with customers. Not posting for postings sake - but instead using this time away from social to review their analytics, review what is actually important for their brand and returning with a fresh perspective - having fewer but more intentional and meaningful social conversations with their customers. 

Make It Happen In Your Business

By making time for a digital detox in your product based business, you will end up with a clearer head, you will have a fresh perspective on whats working and what's not across your social... and you will be much more motivated to tackle your most important business growth projects.

Social media is of course, important for your brand and product based businesses success - so that you can reach a customer base that is active on it. We need to be able to use it for the access to that audience it provides, however it is also equally important to create healthy boundaries when it comes to social media. Especially if you are a founder and CEO of your own company, with a small but mighty team. 

Know when it's time to take a step away from it and have a break. Don’t take it too seriously. If you are part of networking or business groups or pages, don’t feel guilty for not participating in everything. We don’t have the time to be doing it all.  Nor, do we need to, in order to be successful. 

Next Steps:

• If this has resonated with you and you would like to talk about working smarter, not harder with a business coach, please schedule a free breakthrough call to see how we can help you focus on priorities and grow your business faster than you are today.
• Switch off those notifications and delete those apps - do it now.  Have you done it yet?
• Just be reassured that you don’t have to be the best at everything. Stay in your own lane and please don't start comparing yourself to others. It is the worst thing you can do.  You are starting from your own unique place on this business growth journey, and because of this your journey can not be compared in anyway to anyone else. 
• Remember, you don’t have to be delving into new courses for entrepreneurs that are promoted on social media every 5 minutes or absorbing all of that information - that's pure FOMO. Learning should be fun, and focused. If you are going to invest in training or watching a webinar make sure it is 100% linked to a business case, return on investment.  ie. you can clearly articulate the value and sales benefit taking time out to learn will have on your business.  Don't go down the rabbit hole of social media promoted learning - in my view you can either buy a book on running a business or just actually get on with running your business!!
• Focus on one thing at a time and know when it is time to take a digital detox.