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Obviously this is an area that I have and still am struggling with. And here it surfaces again.
I thought once school was back in that I would have all the time in the world to work on Rinse and then be able to be the fabulous mom, wife & homemaker that I aspire to be outside of school hours. Here we are, one week into school and It's not working. Now I know - only one week - but still, I had one productive day out of four when to get everything done I need 6 productive days out of four. It seems that everything lacked a bit and for that I have got to find a solution.
I think my key is to get organized both physically and mentally. I've already taken a couple of steps that I hope will help and have a few more in the works.
- Set office hours - this is HUGE to me. I've always wanted to be available, especially during the "normal business hours" that everyone thinks of (9-5; Monday - Friday) to service my customers. But realisticly it just isn't the best use of my time. It may be fine for the bank that has so many people on staff to do every little thing that needs to be done, but when you have a skeleton crew (mainly myself) you don't have the luxury. My office hours are just that - the hours that I'll be in the office. Hours that people can expect me to answer the phone and return email promptly. The rest of the hours are up for grabs and will be filled with production, playtime and whatever else pops up (including returning phone calls & emails.) Once I updated the hours on my website I felt such a relief. Now I don't have to feel guilty about not answering the phone when I'm in the middle of stirring a batch of soap or when I'm playing a rigourus afternoon game of Go Fish.
- Creating a Schedule - this isn't complete yet, but I am certainly implementing some key parts of it already (see above for one.) On the homemaker front, I created a meal plan for the week & a cleaning schedule. On the Rinse side, I've created a Production Request Log which will tell me what I need to make to fill any upcoming orders or any inventory shortages. I plan on plotting out days for meetings, times for working on marketing efforts, social networking (my blog hasn't seen the light of day in months), accounting...
I'm in the process of eliciting sugestions and tactics that work for my other multi-tasking entrepreneur friends and colleagues and will at a last ditch effort, seek the help of a professional organizer/time manager.
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I'm rocking away to good 'ole Alice Cooper in my head as I'm writing this post.
I have a wonderful & incredibly energetic 3 1/2 year old little boy (Teagan) who goes to school in the mornings 3 days a week. I can never seem to get everything done in those 4 hours each day, but at least I get a few to-do's checked off of my list. This Friday is his last day of school. He goes for 2 hours, so just enough time to have breakfast with another mom who is about to experience the same thing I'm about to write about.
I figure that there are a lot of people in the same boat seeing as though this school year just flew right by, so I thought it is a very appropriate topic on which to speak, and also hoping that some seasoned entrepreneurial moms might just chime in with the perfect solution.
My first thought is "What in the world are we going to do, and how in the world am I going to get anything done!?!?" So this is my plan to accomplish stuff (whatever that I might be) as well as entertain a child who is too young for all of the cool camps out there.
First and foremost we need a schedule. This seems to work really well with Teagan, so I'm hoping to be able to create & implement something the resembles one, even if it's a loose interpretation. I plan to schedule in work time for me, open play time for him, all three meals (if I didn't, we could miss one), quite activity time (puzzles, coloring, blocks...) & action play time (cars, planes, trains...).
Wake up early! It's not very much fun, but it is effective. If I can get a couple of things done before the boy wakes up, it just sets my day up to be more productive. And if he even gets a chance to crawl into bed with me in the AM, there's no telling what time we'll crawl out since I love to cuddle with him.
To-Do List. This will help me keep on task. If I only have 15 minutes to get something done I generally spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do and then once I settle on something I don't have enough time to get it done.
Take advanteage of friends & neighbors. OK, don't just USE them, utilize them. There are 3 of us entrepreneurial moms and we co-op out babysitting time. There's no money exchanged, we just have an understanding that we all have the same issues and needs and help out whenever we can. This works out great and there's no guilt in asking whether it's time for a meeting or production. We're also fortunate enough to have a little boy right next door (with a fenced in yard & a play set) just about the same age as Teagan. He can go over there and play while I work a little then I'll head over and his mom can do what she needs to get done.
Have-Fun List. I'm making a list of the top 8 things I would like to do with Teagan this summer. Go to the zoo, visit the children's museum, play in the fountains downtown, hike the mountain, go geocaching, camp in the back yard... This will make sure that we'll get to have some fun. It is another form of a to-do list, and it's always so rewarding to cross something off.
Shorten my Official Office Hours. As if I even have official office hours... ha! Well first I need to make some and then I'm going to shorten them.
Be flexible. Afterall, part of the reason I'm in business for myself is to be able to enjoy myself. An impromptu water fight, walk or beach trip is exactly what I will need to balance that last minute order that needs to be filled and shipped within an hour.
I hope to be able to continue running my business & keeping my son from hanging on the chandeleir throughout the summer. My light at the end of the tunnel is 4 day a week preschool in the fall in which I will still get hardly anything accomplished.
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You know we are so many things to our businesses. Most of the time we are all (and if not all most) of the following the creative minds, the go-getters, the sales person, the collectors, the accountants, the shipping department, the marketer... We work in the business day after day & night after night.
It's not very often that I personally get a chance to work ON the business. Nothing made this more painfully clear than when I took a business class in the fall. It was all about working ON the business. Everything starting with our Exit Plan (ironically we started at the end - but it all does kinda make sense) to our Mission/Value to Competitive Advantage and so on and so forth. I felt good to know that Rinse had a lot of things already in place (even though I might not have put the fancy & official name tag on it). But I felt horrible about what was not in place.
After doing an amazing activity known to the business savvy as a SWOT Analysis I found that we're doing a lot right, are planning pretty well for what's to come, have a few weaknesses that we have been working on... but all & all we're in pretty good shape. There was one Weakness that was glaring me in the eyes. I had thought about it often, worried about it at night & even feared it when I was away from my computer.
What in the world would happen if my computer died, was lost/stolen, burned in a plane crash... I think I would cry, vomit, cry some more, never be able to sleep until I recreated everything & who knows what else.
As much as I try to be a good "back'er up'er" I'm not. I've burned cd's and sent them 750 miles away (because what happens if your house catches on fire with your laptop & back-ups or additional harddrive in it?) but that only happens like once a year. And a lot happens in a month, let alone a year here at Rinse. I've got too many other hats to wear than data security guard.
So I started searching for alternatives, that I would basiclly, well, not have to do a single thing with. I am so happy to say that I found two options (and opted for one of them) that are affordable, self-reliant & easy to use. They are www.mozy.com & www.carbonite.com.
I am so happy to say that as of 6:00 pm yesterday I could care less if my computer self-distructs (ok, that's a lie, but now it's more for financial reasons rather than my whole life gone reason) now. Almost instantly (or within 15 minutes) of changing a file, the back-up is completed. So that means at most, I would loose 15 minutes of Rinse... now that I can live with.
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I've been doing do good... until now that is. I've been on time with my blogging, interesting topics (at least I think so) & all pretty relevant stuff. Well this one is probably none of the above.
I tried so hard during the holidays (the said busy time for 99% of small business) to make time for my family, and maybe a second per day for myself, getting my to-do list in order and done, looking at my numbers every which way... So why is it that now, in the middle of March, do I find that I have started to let things slip?
It's certainly not that I meant to. Am I as busy? Not sales wise, but things brewing, probably. I think I let my guard down a little. It's March... what in the world could be going on? A couple personal things have popped up, seriously looking for space for Rinse's new workshop slid in there somehow (along comes the budgeting which makes you have to call every utility known to man for pricing; the fire department to make sure I can do what I want to do where I want to do it...), shows are starting to creep up on me, developing new products, making contact with potential accounts, getting an ad together for the July Market... Oh my goodness, there is NEVER a slow time - there is ALWAYS something to do.
I've learned my lessons. I've started back on doing my to-do lists (and still feel as good when I cross something out today as I did in December). I know that the planning that I'm doing now is going to pay off HUGE down the road (at least that's the plan of the plan) so I had better do it. I've started things early (we just made 99 lbs of soap today - a single day high). I try to optimize every Rinse minute of the day.
Hopefully I will be back on-top of things again. But really, who knew... March!?!?
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One of the brash realities of turning a hobby into a business is found in the amount of work that comes along with building your business, especially if you decide to grow it on a part-time basis.
The idea is simple: You love your craft.... You're scary good at it.... You know you can do it for a living and be completely satiated with life. Heck, maybe you can make some good money doing it right away.
But along with that want, maybe you have kids running around at home, a significant other to take care of, and a demanding boss at the 9-to-5. Even if life seems to compound itself on your seemingly overwhelmed little shoulders, you can do it all. Even better, you can do it all very well, if you have a system and a plan.
When I started iram-inal designs in late 2006 with my sister, we were both working full-time jobs. As I've said before in this blog, we bankrolled our business by investing a few hundred dollars on juried art festivals, which quickly turned in to thousands for further investment. Although we thought we had the process down-pat (we found a wholesaler from whom to purchase supplies, we got a production schedule in line), we found that as our business continued to grow, everything changed. Time became less available, money became tighter as we spread our inventory to more locations, and marketing became an important element in helping to establish our brand.
Unfortunately, the truth of the world is that you have to spend money to make money. Along with that ideal, it's doubly important to remember that your time is your most valuable asset. You must equate your value with the time you spend to hone and craft your product, including how you forge your brand to the public. So, the question is, where is it most important to spend the all-mighty dollar in creating your business?
For our business, my sister and I immediately took the plunge and saw the value in investing in every publishing program we could. Instead of immediately hiring an outside company to do our work for us, we instead familiarized ourselves with how to use them. Frontpage, Photoshop, and Publisher became our new best friends, and in learning how to use their applications, saved us a lot of money in the long run. Our website, brochures, flyers, and catalogs were initially - and still are - all created by us. The bottom line: Knowledge is Power. If we cannot find someone to do exactly what we want for our marketing (even in the future), we have the wherewithal to do it ourselves. And that ability in itself is irreplaceable.
It is true that as you continue to grow, and your time becomes even more limited, you must take a step away from doing everything for your business and entrust your marketing, website, and other important aspects of your business to field professionals. But until you reach that point, purchasing programs like those named above is an investment and step I highly recommend. For us, learning how to use these programs was a trial-by-fire process, but saved us tens of thousands of dollars up front.
As our business continues to rapidly grow, we are beginning to craft relationships with field professionals, such as graphic designers and web builders, so that when we're ready, we'll call on them to take away this portion of our existing duties. In the end, until we get to that point, we feel safe and strong knowing that we are sisters who can do it for ourselves.
Until next time, creative people....
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