It’s Personal… AND Business! The Tasks Of An Established Mompreneur

Tasks Of An Established Mompreneur

Feeling weighed down by all the tasks you’re juggling as Mom Entrepreneur?  

Maybe it’s time to stop and take stock. That’s what I just did when I read the contributed post below.  

It felt like the writer just got right inside my headspace and unbundled every aspect of my daily balancing act.  And then made sense of it.  

I felt understood. 

This contributed post offers a unique look at what Self Care really looks like when you’re playing, err… working. the role of Wife, Mom and Entrepreneur at the same time. 

It’s Personal… AND Business! The Tasks Of An Established Mompreneur

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As if it’s not hard enough being a parent while starting a business at home, the considerable tasks you have to face as an entrepreneur in any guise is surmountable, but it can take some time to get there.

While that first year or two in starting your business is all about late nights, early mornings, and working through the weekends, this means that your family bear the brunt of your frustrations. But when it gets to the point that your business is completely up and running, that’s where the hard work ends, right?

Well, no. In fact, this is where the hard work really begins.

As a budding mompreneur, this is the point where your family faces its biggest challenges. In addition to this, you are going to find your limits tested.

For any budding entrepreneur, once you’ve made the climb up the mountain, the goal is to keep the momentum going while you are up there. This can be very difficult, understandably.

So… what does it really take for you to survive these tough times?

Making two versions of yourself

This goes back to the age-old debate between work and life.

As a parent, the work-life balance is something that can be discussed until you are blue in the face. And while there are so many options to make life easier for yourself, the one real solution is actually to compartmentalize your life.

This means, in essence, not using your home in which to operate under business pretences.

While this means more trips away from the house, it’s essential for you to put up a solid barrier between how you are with your family, and how you are in a business context.

This is, of course, easier said than done, but because you are trying to find the right balance in making sure the business takes off appropriately, you can’t have your family resenting you for putting a lot of time into the cause.

Establishing the most clear-cut divides between when you are in work mode and home mode makes everything easier, not just for your family, but for yourself.

For example, a lot of people find the aspect of working in plain clothes unappealing. Many offices have “dress down” days, and the like, but they find that their productivity is sapped, and they just don’t focus as well on their work as they would when they are wearing work clothes.

Consider it like you are playing a character. This can take quite a bit of practice to get right. But you have been playing mom to your kids, and have operated as a business owner concurrently.

Instead, for your business to really fly, you need to ratchet this up a notch or two.

A dedication to your health and well-being

You need to operate in a physical and mental performance in both aspects of your life. Being a parent is incredibly draining in an emotional sense, especially when you have young children, but at the same time, if you are nurturing a business and encouraging that to grow, your brain is most definitely working overtime!

This means that you have to understand what makes you run at an optimum level. This means undertaking an evaluation of the boring stuff: your health, your fitness, and your frame of mind.

This can take some time to get right, but the first thing you have to do is understand your specific triggers.

Starting a business is something that can be psychologically taxing, especially when things go wrong. And while you will learn from your mistakes, during the recuperation process, mentally, you can feel like your pride is being dented.

In order to fully play the role of an entrepreneur, you need to think like one, and this can mean a sense of harshness has to be employed in certain aspects of your thinking.

So remember the age-old expression, it’s not personal, just business. You don’t have to use this expression in all aspects of how you operate the company, but if it helps you to avoid pointless distractions that could have a devastating impact on your business.  Especially when you are trying to nurture relationships with clients.  Then it is an essential Modus Operandi that you need on occasion.

Conversely, the other aspect you need to consider is how you recuperate in a mental sense. It’s unrealistic to think that you can work flat-out for 18 hours a day, every day until it gets to the point where your business is self-reliant.

You will succumb to pressures, feel unwell, and it could be a slippery slope downwards. This is why you need to make sure that you spend adequate time revitalizing your energy stores.

This can be done through simple lifestyle approaches, from a healthy diet, as well as a little bit of exercise, but also making sure that you are doing things that are solely for you.

This means indulging in hobbies that aren’t part of your business.

Take the time to go shopping, to the movies, and splurge on things that make you feel good about yourself. It’s not difficult these days to take a day to go on a shopping spree, a lovely meal with your family and take your mind away from business pressures.

Indulge in your fashion pastimes, and you could argue that shoe shopping is a business expense. Stores like the Alegria Shoe Shop and their closeout shoes are one of those few outlets that cater to those with fashionable tastes, but also need practicality with regards to their daily business dealings.

You begin to think, when you are going to every trade show, having breakfast meetings in hotels, and travelling the length and breadth of the country by car, train and plane, like you’re not doing anything for yourself. As a result, you could feel a sense of claustrophobia in life.

Because you feel that this treadmill needs to keep going you might be too scared to get off it for any reason. But if your business was to end tomorrow, you don’t want to look back and feel that all you did was work.

This means you need to take on board the things that make you feel rested and rejuvenated and positive. Taking a day or an afternoon off every week gives you the time your mind and body needs to replenish every store.

Let it go

We all experience a personal crisis when faced with a conundrum of if we are neglecting our family for the sake of our business.

It’s important to let these doubts go, and trust your instincts. Because we can’t please everybody, we need to please ourselves. Now, this might sound selfish, but if you feel a sense of guilt that you are neglecting your family, what can you do to remedy this? Spend more time with your family!

This means having a more concrete plan on how to tackle both aspects of your life. While you might consider working between the hours of 9 and 5, this isn’t always feasible.

But operating with a calendar can help to give you a clearer vision of how to tackle both aspects. Your children will have recitals, important events, and the like, and you need to be at these.

It’s these things that you will regret missing when you’re older, not the business.

This is why you need to let some aspects of your business go.

So how can you make this something that won’t keep you up at night?

You don’t have to do this alone

Delegating is the most important aspect of any successful entrepreneur.

You might think that you need to do it all yourself because you have to prove something to you and everyone around you because you’ve never been in charge of anything before. But, this battle is only going on inside of you.

In making sure that you devote enough time to family as well as to your business, delegating is something that works in both camps. If you have a partner who could do more around the house, for example, this would help to take the pressure off you.

The same applies to the business. Something as basic as admin can be done by outsourcing it to a freelancer, and there are many different websites that you can find good quality freelancers for a good price.  Virtual assistants are on the increase now, and this is another thing you can take advantage of.

In essence, you have to let some things go. If you are a control freak with regards to how your business operates in every aspect, you are stifling its progress!

Instead, by delegating duties to someone else, not only is it giving your business the opportunity to open up in new and exciting ways, it frees you up to spend more time with the people you love.

In Summary

Getting your business to fly isn’t about SEO tactics, marketing, and every common approach you can read about online, it’s about knowing that you have the internal tools in which to operate the business in a satisfactory manner.

If you made the leap from stay-at-home mom to mompreneur, there’s a lot you will learn about the act of doing business, but also how you can tread the fine line between operating with a business head, while also learning how to put your family first. And this is where the real work takes place.

Shoo, such words of wisdom in this hard-hitting post. 

Being a Mom Entrepreneur definitely can take Mom Guilt to a whole new level.

And I agree, there comes a time to practice Self Care and a time to delegate.

Over to You

How are you doing, Mom?  Are you managing to get your work life balance just right?  Or are you dropping catches every day?  

Are you taking time out to rejuvenate?  Are you starting to delegate?  

Or are you just going hell for leather, woman alone, hoping for the best, hoping one day it’s all going to get easier? 

This post made me realise that dream (the dream of working 3 or 4 hours a day and dedicating the rest of my time to my family) will never become a reality if I don’t let go of some of the reins.  

I also know I cannot scale my business until I employ help.  It’s time.