When I’m stressed, I dream about kittens.

I’ll wake up from what has become a recurring dream for me over the years — sweet, fuzzy, mewing, needy kittens everywhere, multiplying every 15 minutes or so (first six, then twelve, then twenty-four — and they’re all my responsibility!) — and it’ll hit me, Ohhhhhhh. I’m really stressed out.

For me, the kitten dream is my subconscious’s way of telling myself, You’re trying to manage too many moving, wiggly parts. You’re over-caretaking.

Over-caretaking, for me, is a hallmark of stress.

I remember attending an intimate business retreat a few years ago with a group of eight other women, and, apropos with my usual levels of moderate anxiety, I appointed myself the unspoken butler of the group: fetching my friends cold water bottles from the fridge, asking people if they wanted a pillow behind their backs as they settled in on the floor. Finally, someone pointed out to me what I was doing and I said, “Oh? I am?” My friends nodded slowly, twinkles of amusement in their eyes. “So . . . I guess you all can . . . take care of yourselves?” (My voice rose as I asked this question.) Please, some of them added.

I learned that day, in the realest way I ever had up to that point, that caretaking everyone and everything is NOT my job. In fact, it doesn’t even feel GOOD to me.

But when you own a business, there are many, many things that need taken care of. If you want your business to be successful, you HAVE to care-take, in a sense.

You started your business because you wanted to help people, or add beauty to the world, or to bring innovation to an area that matters to you.

Along the way, you’ve noticed that getting the work done on time and with ease and pleasure is harder than being about the work.

You BELIEVE in what you’re doing. You’re on a mission. You love your Right People. You’re about the work you do all day long.

But managing the actual production of deliverables can be difficult. The big vision is only as potent as the way it gets carried out.

When you own and operate your own values-based business, you’re responsible for everything.

Even when you grow to the point where it makes great sense to hire a Virtual Assistant, the buck will always stop with you. You actually LIKE it this way — it’s part of the reason you started your business to begin with.

But no human being — including ME, all of my clients, and all of my colleagues — can manage everything all on our own, when there are multiple moving parts, many dynamics at play, and forces that are outside of our control. As your business momentum accelerates, this will become only MORE true, not less.

No matter how intentional you are about creating the excellent results you deliver, there will inevitably be details that go astray. So many wiggly, mewing kittens.

My kitten dreams dramatically decreased when I found a way to integrate and organize ALL of the behind-the-scenes processes that help me run my business.

(I’m happy to report I’ve only had one kitten dream in the past year.)

When I met my collaborative partner Tami Smith, she showed me how fun and easy it could be to integrate just about every aspect of the work I did with clients using Google Apps — which are FREE or very low-cost, by the way. With added Google Apps genius from my Project Curator, I was easily sold on organizing The Voice Bureau from the inside out using these tools.

We talk more about what the first couple years of my business looked like, pre-Google Apps-integration, in the complimentary Mp3 conversation shared in this post. We also touch on why and how Tami learned to use these apps so expertly (it’s a pretty cool story, actually), and HOW to recognize whether you need to consider building more sophisticated back-end systems and structures for your own business.

But as a brand voice specialist, it was super important to me to present my business well from the inside out, including our client intake forms, the way we set up our online learning programs, and how we collect feedback and testimonials.

Fortunately, the suite of tools I’m using allows for that, too. I can deliver prospects, clients, and customers a fully-branded, Voice Bureau experience all the way through, from the moment they make contact with us until the moment they send us feedback on their experience working with us.

I know that I’m not alone in experiencing multiplying kittens in my growing business. And I know that there are easy-to-use, flexible, lightweight tools that can grow with your business, expanding or contracting as needed and desired.

Tami and I have put together a compact, content-rich course to help our Voice Bureau readers get a grip on their kittens. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Learn how to create and manage easy, streamlined systems and processes that will make everything you do in your business a whole lot easier.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS ON THE COURSE.

Though Tami and I are BOTH creating and contributing to the course, it’s priced as a two-specialists-for-one. We begin Thursday, February 27th. We’d love for you to join us!

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What’s one of the first signs you experience when running your business is stressing you out? What’s YOUR kitten dream?