“An entrepreneur is someone who will work 23 hours a day for themselves, in order to avoid working 1 hour a day for someone else.”
If you’re working for yourself, you know that this is one of those jokes that we both laugh at–and shake our heads at.
Working for yourself, stakes are higher. After all, everything will bear your name, and ultimately, there will be no corporate entity issuing apologies through its legal team if there’s a big mess-up–it’ll be you.
When I decided to take my part-time coaching practice to full-time, I naively walked with a “build it and they will come” mentality, thinking that if I simply told people that I was now taking on more clients…I’d have more clients.
I applaud anyone for whom things run this smoothly–I was just not one of those people. Growing my practice has involved adapting to big changes in how I spent my time, as well as keeping a close eye to how I can be on my own edge of innovation.
Here are a few things I invite you to keep in mind if you, like me, are someone with the entrepreneurial spirit, and you want to adapt to change as you grow what you do:
- Keep your eye on what truly matters in your business. My first priority is creating an experience of feeling fulfilled. I spent a lot of time doing things the way I thought I “had to” because I thought that someone else’s way would automatically transfer to me. Instead, I’ve needed to learn what fulfillment looks like as well as how to create it.
- Remember that you’re being of service. When working for yourself, it’s so easy to get hung up on cash flow too quickly. In the stock market, we cannot ask an investment to pay off immediately after investing. The same is true for building a business–as you ask your business to take up greater space in your life, and as you take on more responsibilities, you will not necessarily see an immediate boom. Continue putting service to your clients and your business, first.
- If you do see an immediate boom, start asking for help–early, and often. Start offloading responsibilities. Ask your partner to help with more housework, or hire a once-a-week housecleaner, or just accept a slightly messier home for a short time. Hire a freelancer via word-of-mouth or a website such as elance.com to farm out the things that you dislike doing. Start doing this early, and do it often.
- Practice regular self-care–no excuses! Burnout is a hard hole to climb out of.
When we take time to care for ourselves in the midst of a change in work responsibilities, we’ll find that we’re more able to rise to the challenges before us, and a greater asset to the people who are depending on us–including that person within who has taken such a courageous step in the pursuit of a more fulfilling life.
It can be such a challenge to take time for self-care when we’re starting a new business, isn’t it? I remember always telling myself, after each 60-80 hour workweek, “Well, next week will be less hectic and I’ll have some downtime then.” But then the week would come, and it would be another 60-80hr workweek, and I’d be singing the same tune! It has been a huge shift to really stop that pattern. Thanks for commenting, Patti!
Twitter: strategicsense
says:
Kate, I love the points you make above, all relevant and true. The greatest struggle for most of my clients is to realize the last point you make and that is taking care of themselves. Health is a lifetime commitment, and dropping that focus for even a few years to build a business can be seriously detrimental to a person in the long run. Your guidance here can make all the difference to someone who learns that putting oneself first is not selfish, but necessary to be there for others.
Twitter: lifechangenet
says:
That is a huge point about health. Our career drives are often given precedence when in reality it should be balanced. Always a great idea to establish this as a priority and have a coach or someone to hold you accountable.
I’m self employed, work from 5am to 6:30pm 6 days a week. So what exactly constitutes “self-care”? Is it strictly from a health perspective — like try to work out on a regular basis? That’s simply not in the cards for someone who is growing a business and has two children under the age of three. On the other hand I love what I do and I absolutely LOVE my family so I’m a happy guy altogether. I don’t see how this could burn me out.