Entrepreneurs often start their own businesses to have some sort of control over how they spend their time. However, because entrepreneurs are often in such a building mode, it’s easy to lose balance between work life and personal life.
There’s a belief that to be successful you have to dump all your time and energy into your business, and that’s just not true. I’m living proof of that.
Part of maintaining balance between your personal time and your work is setting boundaries. This is often a difficult thing for entrepreneurs to do for a variety of reasons. First of all, we not only want to make money, but… we kind of have to. Then, once we gain stability, our goals often change, but once we have that traction, we want to grow and expand.
We are also constantly bombarded with messaging of what we’re “supposed to be doing” to be successful. Then, we feel like we need to add so many other things to our to-do list.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Here’s how I keep my workload manageable while running an abundant business.
Estimate Your Time
The foundation of balancing your time between your personal time and your work is to determine how much you actually want to work. This doesn’t need to be an exact science. You can come up with a weekly goal, and some weeks may be more hours, while some weeks may be less.
This is such a crucial part of taking control of your time that you can find many resources on it. My coaches have talked about it, Sarah Turner talks about it in her Write Your Way to Freedom program, and I’m sure there are many others beating this drum.
Basically, the key to this step is to figure out how many hours you want to work per month, week, or day (however you format your schedule), and then figure out how many projects or clients fit into that schedule depending on how your business runs.
Also, keep in mind that different work has different life cycles. For example, I often only want to work on 2-3 books at a time. However, I can take on more when one project is wrapping up and another one is just beginning. I would have less capacity though if all projects started at the same time.
Limit Who You Work With
This leads us to limiting who you work with to fit that schedule. The key is to focus on working with people who are a good fit for you because you’ll ultimately enjoy the work more, which helps you to produce higher quality work while also being more efficient.
You want to choose folks who align with the intentions of your business and that feel good to work with. This will help you to build your business consciously and in a way that is sustainable for your purpose because the clients you work with will often help lead you to other similar connections. If you end up working with clients that drain you, you may lose your joy and purpose when it’s really still there deep down.
I love to work with people who have an abundance mindset and who are purpose-driven. These people respect my time and value. And because they are working towards a meaningful “why”, it helps me to stay connected to my “why” of creating good in the world through the power of communication and storytelling.
Being selective about who you work with creates automatic boundaries in your schedule by preventing you from overscheduling while having clients who respect the way you run your business.
Charge Accordingly
So if we’re limiting hours and clients, how do we make money? This all means that you need to charge accordingly. It’s easy in a service business to feel that we need to charge by time, but then you get punished for becoming more efficient. You’ll also quickly hit a ceiling of how much income you can make.
If you charge by value rather than by time, it becomes increasingly easy to run an abundant business because you get better at what you do as you grow (so you can charge more) and you also become more efficient (so it takes less time).
This is where connections in the field and doing research can help benchmark what feels good for initial rates. You can then adjust from there as you learn more in your work and about the industry.
If this is something you struggle with and you’d like someone to partner with to build the schedule you originally dreamed of as you built your career and business, then let’s chat in a free strategy session.
Disclaimer: This blog should not be construed as providing, or intending to provide professional financial, legal, psychological, or other professional advice. It is simply meant to share my experiences with those who may find them relatable and helpful.