Small Business Owners Unite!
This article is dedicated to those who have left this lifestyle, of working 9-5, behind.
Instead, we’ve chosen to work in our own small business!
Maybe we are all a bit crazy?
My Crazy Days…
My working hours are 7:32 AM – 2:37 PM Monday – Friday, except for holidays and random teacher work days.
Then I take a long break to be with my kids – do homework, activities, dinner, and more homework.
From Small Business Owner to Soccer Mom!
From Small Business Owner to Cross Country Mom.
My work day then continues most days from 8 PM – 10 PM to finish up loose ends and start planing for the next day.
This means that each day as I walk in the door from dropping my youngest at school, I grab an apple or a banana and I run to my home office. I might stop for a 2 minute break to brew a pot of coffee at 9 AM and at lunch I’ll take a whole 20 minute break to walk the three dogs, eat my lunch, and do meal prep for dinner. Then I am back at my desk right until the magic 2:37 PM alarm goes off – time to put on shoes, leash up dogs and run to the busstop to pick up my youngest.
I squeeze every single minute of every day my kids aren’t home, and turn them into sweet-tasting social media marketing success.
I’ve been in business for almost 5 years now and I absolutely love what I do!
Owning a Small Business and Working From Home; Win-Win for me!
I would encourage all (wo)men to check into the possibility of working from home if they can, especially if you have children at home.
As a parent, working from home has given me the flexibility to
- Attend all school award ceremonies
- Go in and volunteer in the classroom
- Care for my sick child and still be present at the office
- Get household tasks done during the day so I can get more time with my kids in the evenings
- Go on school field-trips
- Take a vacation when I want to take it
- Drive my kids’ carpools
- Be on the sideline when they play sports
and so much more.
Caution
Besides rewarding and fun, owning my own small business also is
- A lot of hard work
- Time consuming
- Stressful at times
- Lonely
When do you know when enough is enough and it’s time to hire someone, or outsource some of your tasks?
Please, do this before you snap (at your spouse, your partner or your family) and before you make yourself go a bit crazy!
Truth
I recently hit the ‘snapping’ point myself in my consulting business and besides finding a copywriter to outsource blog writing to, aligning myself with a great cohost for a weekly Blab show and entering a MasterMind group, I also hired a cleaning crew to clean my home/office once a month! The ‘stress’ of having to clean my home, after working countless hours in my home office was just too much. So it was either hire someone or lower my standards of cleanliness… (which are pretty low to start – I have four kids and three large dogs).
I am actively creating new systems so I can start outsourcing even more tasks because it has freed up so much time and relieved so much stress, I really wish I’d done it much sooner!
If you think you might be at the point in your small business…check out these:
7 Signs Your Small Business Is Ready for Outsourcing Help
or as I would like to call it;
7 Crazy Ways To Run Your Small Business In To The Ground
- You work a full work week yet your Monday to-do list is so scary-looking, you frequently start working on the list on Sunday night.
- You can do it all, of course, but when the dog gets sick, the water heater leaks and your car needs a tune up, you end up finding yourself working at 11:37 PM on Thursday night to make up for time lost somewhere during your work week.
- You are so busy you schedule your bathroom breaks to coincide with opening mail, getting a snack from the fridge or paying a bill. Multitasking at its best.
- Your office is in a state of disarray because you are…working. Who has time for organization? (Yet an organized office would make you more productive and you know it!)
- Your family asks you questions and you randomly nod, agree and say ‘naha’ just to get them to be quiet while you think, finish a task and continue to work. You’ll never really know what you agreed to!
- You work through lunch, through coffee hour and into dinner; eating and drinking at your desk.
- You wake up with your Smartphone in your hand, check email right when you wake up and all the way until right before you go to sleep.
If this sounds like your life, if this is you…take action and change your habits!
Get help; it is the best thing I’ve done for my business this year and it already producing results; it is helping me grow my business!
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