3 Tips To Help You Balance Being Your Own Boss
Being your own boss is great until it’s not. Amiright!? Sure, it has its perks, and getting to making your own schedule is pretty awesome. But, contrary to popular belief, it’s SO hard to have to run everything yourself. When you’re your own boss, you don’t have anyone to hold you accountable except you. You have to figure out how to manage your own time and your whole team, (if you have one). You have to keep yourself disciplined, while also keeping focused and determined with unwavering faith in your overall vision and mission. You pretty much have to figure everything out ON YOUR OWN.
Sometimes it can feel impossible to find a balance between working hard to achieve your goals and taking care of yourself professionally to put out your best, most authentic work. But, once you find that balance and find things that help you be more effective as an entrepreneur and boss, you’ll be unstoppable. As a creative entrepreneur myself, I follow a few key guidelines to help me stay true to myself and stay on track with my business goals!
Create and maintain your vision
A significant way to be professionally successful and happy is to always use your original mission/vision as your basis for everything you do. Don’t lose sight of WHY you decided to do what you do in the first place. Maybe you want to help other people. Maybe you want to provide a financially sustainable life for you and your family. Maybe you want to spread awareness to a cause that’s important to you. Whatever your reason is, make sure you always remind yourself of this vision and stay true to it!
To help you always have your vision in mind, you can do things like mind mapping or creating a vision board to make sure you’re on the right path. You can refresh these as often as you need (every month, every quarter, every year). Make sure you have an overall mission. From there, set your goals to ensure you’re actively and effectively working towards that. This will help you make sure that your original vision doesn’t get lost in the mix of your ever-changing business endeavors!
2. Ditch or delegate
Time management is one of the most daunting and problematic parts of being your own boss. Sure, it seems amazing that you can work on your own time and have more flexibility (and it is), but with that luxury comes the struggle of balance. Making sure you’re getting everything done in a timely manner and meeting your deadlines isn’t easy when you’re the person in charge of making your own schedule.
This is where “ditch or delegate” comes in. “Ditch” or say no to certain tasks or responsibilities - especially if they don’t align with your vision/goals. “Delegate” or pass off some tasks to someone else. Hire someone or ask for help. It’s okay to not take everything on yourself. Learn to trust that other people can help you reach your goals. You’ll be able to reach your goals faster with even just a little bit of help.
Doing these will help you clear up time so you can take care of yourself and enjoy the process more, as well as enjoy things outside of your work-life. And that’s the most important thing.
3. Building and maintaining relationships
Being your own boss may mean you have less opportunity to interact with people, such as coworkers, compared to other people. If you work from home, you’re probably even MORE isolated. Working from home makes it entirely too easy to become a little hermit and forget to nurture connections with people. Because of this, you have to put in a little bit of extra effort to build and maintain your relationships.
As an entrepreneur, it’s extra important to network with people that are similar to you - similar lifestyles, visions, and work-ethics. These people not only may be important to your business goals in the future, they also will keep you motivated to continue to improve and do better as an entrepreneur. Someone like a mentor or coach is also extremely important for this reason. Not only will they keep you motivated, they’re also someone that can be there for you when you need an extra push, or even just someone to talk to to gain insight and support. They will understand what you’re going through because they probably have gone through it themselves.
If you’re your own boss, that means you’re probably extremely hard-working and have your brain working overtime. I bet you have ideas flowing though you all the time, maybe even in your dreams (I know I do)! But, that also probably means that you sometimes have a hard time maintaining balance within your business and goals. Having time to take care of yourself and for your personal life is a huge factor in the success of your business. Make sure you stay true to yourself and commit to your overall vision by finding a balance and having some professional-self-care strategies.
