When you decide to go out on your entrepreneurial journey, you feel excited and ready to conquer the world. However, you might forget one thing: You are adding another responsibility to your plate. Most people who are starting a business may have several responsibilities such as a family, a fulltime job, school or even a social life. While you don’t want to sacrifice every other aspect of your life to find success in business you will need to put certain things on the backburner. Here’s a few tips on how to balance your new life as a BOSS.
#1: Be clear on what you have time for
It is so easy to say yes to everything and possibly end up overextending yourself. The last thing you want to do is burn yourself out in the first year of business. Sit down and make a schedule and be very detailed. Include your hours at work, if you’re in a relationship pencil in times that you usually spend together, include volunteer time and anything else that gets a significant portion of your time. Once you see where your time goes it becomes easy to see when you will have time for new clients. You don’t want to make the mistake of bringing on 10 new clients but delivering subpar work. If you only have time for 6 clients a month, be ok with that. Look at your current arrangements and see what you can cut down on without fully eliminating it.
#2: Have office hours
When we spoke with entrepreneurs, they said one of the key things they did after a few months was set clear boundaries on when they dealt with work. One mom said she did no business work after 9pm on the weekdays and on Sundays the only work thing she did was prepare her schedule for the upcoming week. Business is important and should be handled but you need time where business is not being conducted.
#3: Be prepared to have to make changes
While we want you to learn balance, know that your schedule will not be the same and there will be changes that will need to be made. If you tend to indulge in 5 hours of Netflix after work or school, the truth is that number of tv binging will need to decrease in order to make your business successful. If you usually go out every weekend, that will probably need to decrease to once a month. In order to financially support and make time for clients you must be open to changing things. That will require you to be more focused and disciplined.
#4: Integrate new habits
Speaking of being more focused & disciplined, finding things to do that will help with your mental space like finding a new podcast for entrepreneurs, joining a networking group or even picking up a physical activity can drastically improve your life. Starting this journey will be an emotional rollercoaster, so having a source of motivation when you think about giving up is important.
