When I first started working for myself everyone I spoke to in the entrepreneur world said I would be so busy I wouldn’t be able to keep up. It is true, when you first start, you wake up busy! However, everything you are doing is so new it takes twice as long as anything you are used to doing – hence the busy (worry / freak-outs). Once you get the hang of a few things your day becomes a little easier, your confidence grows and you have a little more free time. When this happened for me, I was about 5 months in and the summer was just starting so I took full advantage of my “free” hours through the week.
What’s the catch?
Here’s the catch ….while I had a few hours a week to “relax” the curious mind of an entrepreneur is always searching for “what’s next”. Naturally – I was always thinking of what I could do next, how I could tweak what I was doing to be more in line with the things I love to do and OF COURSE how I could make more money!! For me, the two things I started that quickly took away my “free” time were:
1 – publish 2 chapters of my book in a business compilation book (woohoo – dream come true!)
2 – enroll in a 6 month coaching/leadership program that would help shape my business and figure out my next steps.
Sooooo – I am now understanding what all the fuss was about when other entrepreneurs would tell me they work so much. At this stage of the game you have to have enough business to pay the bills and continue to keep that going, you have to plan and build the foundation of what will become your long standing business, you have to work to define your target market and how you will reach those people, you have to put the work into creating the format / the idea AND then launch the new phase …oh ya and all the while maintaining your current paying clients and delivering quality work to them.
And, that’s not all.
You also have to network regularily, work with a coach (highly recommend) and build the administrative support around your current and future business. And, I am probably forgetting something but I am already tired of adding to this list!
So, yes, now I am starting to see the full picture of what this is all about and suddenly I am longing for the early days of confusion (not really…but kinda).
The thing is you can’t un-know something so once you know it – you have to act on it, or at least I do. My pain used to be that I was so in the dark and now my pain is to juggle everything I know needs to happen to be happy and successful – in that order.
Oh ya, and also make time for your family, friends and life as well. This is the ultimate test of balance. At this stage of formation I still have the power to decide how busy I want to be but I also have to build up enough business to strike that balance between the money I want / need to earn and the time I want to spend earning it. This is now my challenge. I am being very careful not to get too caught up in one or the other. My new “unknown” is how to strike that balance. More to come on that – stay tuned.
Until next time – dream, experience and love your life.
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