Is it Possible- Family and Running A Business?
Reading time – 10 minutes
Personal Decisions
One of the decisions you need to make about running a business is when to do it. For me I decided to wait until my children were almost done high school. My life was too busy taking care of a household, working part time, supporting 3 children in 3 different schools and making sure I got to the gym to exercise. I felt I couldn’t take on any more. Be honest with yourself and consider:
- Can you afford to leave your current job
- Do you have the skills to start a business or do you need to develop them
- Do you have the supports in place to change your life, a coach, childcare, finances, etc?
Business Decisions
As you choose your business, think about these things.
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Market Research:
Understand your target audience, identify their needs, and analyze the competition to ensure there’s a demand for your product or service. For me this is the hardest step, I just wanted to get started.
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Business Plan:
A comprehensive business plan is essential for outlining your goals, strategies, and financial projections. A business plan helps you to get a loan from a financial institution and get into entrepreneurial programs offered by the government
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Legal Structure:
Choose the appropriate legal structure for your business (e.g., sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation) based on your needs and legal requirements.
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Funding:
Secure the necessary funding to cover startup costs and operational expenses. This can include personal savings, loans, or investments. Have your funding in place before you leave your current job. It is hard to approach a financial institution and get a loan if you are unemployed.
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Differentiation:
Identify what makes your business unique and how it will stand out from competitors. This will make it easier to market your business.
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Growth Potential:
Analyze the potential for growth and scalability in your market. Some businesses will grow quickly and others take much longer to grow and become profitable.
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Passion and Persistence:Starting a business requires dedication and resilience. Make sure you’re prepared for the challenges and setbacks. Running your own business is a full-time job 40 hours a week or more. If you are doing it part-time time it will take longer to grow.
Let’s make it work with your family
Scheduling helps you to use your time in blocks and avoid scattering single tasks throughout the day leaving small segments of unproductive time.
My tip for parents running their businesses from home is about time management.
Running a business and organizing a household is a complex task. Time management is the key to success and sanity. Scheduling everything will help:
- tasks to get completed,
- commitments to be honoured
- and make arriving on time possible
However, scheduling everything can be overwhelming initially. Start by using only one calendar, paper or electronic, for all the activities in your schedule. Try a “clearing your mind” task. This involves writing down everything you have to do. Record one task per line on your paper or one task per entry until you have everything recorded. Including exercise, work appointments, social commitments, bill payments, household tasks, children’s commitments, social media, doctor appointments, marketing, networking, a trip to the park, birthday parties etc. After you have them recorded, go back to the top of your list and write the date and time (schedule) when you will complete the task. Put all of these dates on your calendar remember to include travel time when you schedule tasks. As you look at your calendar you will be able to determine how much time you have each day, month and year available for the activities that are important to your life, family and business. It will help to put time into perspective and help determine why you might be feeling:
- overwhelmed
- overworked
- bored
- tired
- successful
- energized
- excited
- frustrated
Once you start to schedule everything, it will become easier because many of the entries will be recurring each day, week, month or year. They will be in your calendar and only new items will need to be added to your schedule. This will provide a structure that you can rely on to help you with the complex task of running a business and organizing a household.
Time management also applies to your children. Help teach them how to schedule things so they don’t surprise you with more items you need to complete.
A colleague wrote a blog I contributed to, What I Wish I’d Known before becoming A Professional Organizer Many of these ideas apply to any new business.
Running a business is fun and rewarding. You learn many new skills, meet new people and learn a lot about yourself. Give it a try.
If you need help with time management book a series of mini organizing sessions with me.
Julie Stobbe is a Trained Professional Organizer and Lifestyle Organizing Coach who brings happiness to homes and organization to offices, coaching you virtually using Zoom. She has been working with clients since 2006 to provide customized organizing solutions to suit their individual needs and situations. She uses her love of teaching to reduce clutter, in your home, office, mind and time. She guides and supports you to be accountable for your time, to complete projects and to reach your goals. If you’re in a difficult transition Julie can coach you to break-free of emotional clutter constraining you from living life on your terms. Online courses are available to help instruct, coach and support your organizing projects. Get started by downloading Tips for Reorganizing 9 Rooms.
Contact her at julie@mindoverclutter.ca
Life involved juggling many things. Having reliable systems like the one you described makes a positive difference. At the same time, things will always pop up beyond our control, and planning makes those ’emergencies’ easier to navigate.
Having a mindset of flexibility is important. Planning and scheduling is important so you can have the flexibility to change your schedule. Being only flexible with no schedule leads to chaos and having no time for the important events because you are always jumping from one fire to anther.
I often think that when you “clear your brain,” it is pretty crazy to see how much you have to do. It sort of justifies why people feel overwhelmed – it can be a LOT!
Pushing through the process of scheduling tasks, and then carrying through when they are scheduled, is a great way to ensure that things actually get the attention they need. If you can’t even figure out how to get things done on paper, how will ever actually accomplish them in real time, right?
Many people get afraid as they do the clear the mind task and see how much they do. Then I think they start to feel a sense of accomplishment as they see how full their life is. I love your comment, if you can figure it out on paper how will you actually get it done.
Great advice; I totally agree, Julie!
People think I am crazy, but writing down EVERY TASK is vital to remember what I must do. When the kids were little, I even had to add “take a shower” to my list of to-dos. It may sound silly, but I didn’t want to recall any small task. I just wanted to go from one task to another without thinking about it.
Yes when my kids were little things were busy. I would have everything written done for them and me so they could see when I was available and when I was busy to figure out when I could help them. It is a very big skill to teach children how to combine 2 ore more people’s schedule to determine when things can happen. It is a skill they use everyday as adults.
I’ve discovered that flexibility is key. Sometimes you may have to shift your work schedule to accommodate the needs of your family – and vice versa. It’s not always about checking tasks off the list, but about being fully present for your family or your clients.
I completely agree that flexibility in shifting a schedule is important. In addition when you need to make those shifts not getting overwhelmed, anxious and anger about it is very important. Excepting it as a change for the best and moving on is important. My priorities are like yours, people and relationships over tasks.
I really love your take on a brain dump — going through and prioritizing and figuring out not just what but WHEN something will be done keeps things from falling through the cracks, and can really eliminate anxiety and frustration. Remembering all business tasks is hard enough; I can’t imagine how much more complex it is to keep track of every kid/family-related task as well. Great job!
I think sometimes people think they can remember everything especially when they are younger. Some point in life there are too many things to remember and a system needs to be developed to “remember” everything. It is much nicer when you can use you brain for fun things and put the routines things one autopilot.
It’s a time management, commitment, have a schedule, be calm and everything will move smoothly. We live busy lives and full schedules with work and kids with school and activities. Also have both parents involved to help with any last minute emergencies. When you get to the weekend, enjoy it though!
Hi Janet. I agree with your thoughts. I especially like the idea to make the weekend enjoyable. It can get busy taking up time with things that didn’t get completed during the week. Taking a break from the week’s schedule to unwind will make the next week easier.