When the Solopreneur gets Swamped…

Well, I am feeling the pressure this week. Ultimately, I don’t really want to be just blogging for a living here - I have so much more I want to do with this business, and that of eSelfHelp. But at this point, it is a fairly critical component to the path to success. At the same time, coming up with quality content for the blog is time consuming… and this week everything is picking up steam! What can I do to get everything done, yet still keep myself sane and my kids from catching cabin fever?

Here’s a wrap up of my week: 

1 - Les Brown! Now that I have been able to talk with Alan, my coach who met with him, I have more details, and they are indeed exciting. Alan, as mentioned before, is the owner of Anthony Robbins and Associates, a ‘franchise’ location of the Tony Robbins companies (there are only two in the nation). I have seen Tony speak, and of course, am at every one of Alan’s events (I am one of his lead trainers). Alan is an incredibly talented speaker, and has changed thousands of lives over the 13 years he has been doing this. Les Brown wants to partner with Alan on several fronts, primarily in that he wants to help Alan develop his own self help products and materials, and will help to promote him accordingly (super exciting!!!). The part where I come in is that Les wants help promoting his own products, and we will be coming up with a plan to do that via eSelfHelp (also super exciting!!!).

2 - Coaching! I have several coaching sessions this week, due to my sporadic coaching schedule (they coincide with Alan’s events), and this will take up about 12 hours this week.

3 - AD:Tech!! It’s in Chicago today and tomorrow and I have to get downtown to go! At this point in my online business, I need to do as much networking as possible in the industry. I already have a lot of contacts and can’t miss such a great opportunity to build my network. As a board member for CIMA (Chicago Interactive Marketing Association), I am working in our booth this afternoon - the perfect thing to both give to a cause and receive value for my time! There’s also the Ad:Tech after party - where I really get to mix business with fun!

4 - My to do list for the week! Blogging, writing three articles for this site, working 4 hours on my business plan, and reading/studying more of my own eBook on Psychic Demand by Frank Haddock, among other things. It’s hard not to feel overhwhelmed - or just start procrastinating. Neither emotion is really an option right now, as much as I would like to indulge. So I must start looking at this situation differently if I am to accomplish what I need to accomplish this week:

First of all, I am looking at a big, big picture of things to do. If I simply have a to do list in front of me, this week doesn’t seem so huge of a task.

Secondly, it’s time to trim the fat. What is a must this week? What can wait? I have a list of things for my Mastermind Group that MUST be done, or leverage is induced. But I can rearrange some other meetings, and perhaps even delegate some research to my oldest daughter or husband.

Thirdly, I am becoming aware that this will likely not be a fun week for my kids. I can either 1-choose to feel guilty about it or 2-focus on how much fun they have had recently (camping, multiple boating trips) and simply just know that some weeks will be a bit challenging as a work at home mom. I’ll choose 2 for now, and then also ensure that my kids get some extra mom time when things lighten up.

When things get swamped, though, it really is difficult to fit the kids back into your schedule. When this happens, I put an outing with the kids onto my Mastermind commitment list. That way there is simply NO question I will give them the time they deserve. This also works to combat the other evil of working from home:: feeling guilty when I spend time with the kids when there is so much work to do!!! When anything I commit to gets on my Mastermind commitment list, I simply can’t feel guilty about getting it done, as I have such positive associations to being a committed individual who does what she says she does. :)

But this also brings up a different question - as my business grows, my weeks will only get busier, not easier. What can be done to continue to keep my work life balance in balance?

Here are a few of the things I have in the works:

  1. Ask for more help. I am interviewing an intern this week, and have fingers crossed that this will be a big help with freeing up my time to focus on growing rather than maintaining my business
  2. I have inquired at my bank about small business credit lines. Depending on what is available, this might help to make some investments to get some of my work automated or outsourced. The first things that come to mind are hiring help with my paid search engine marketing, hiring a transcription service (because it would be much easier for me to speak my articles and have someone else type them up) and hiring a research assistant to help get my business plan completed.
  3. Depending on how my business plan fleshes out, I may even seek an investor or two for building eSelfHelp. If I really had resources, my first investment would be to hire a webmaster, as this is the biggest drain on my most precious resource: time.
  4. Lastly, the most un-exciting of my points, but also the most crucial: keep my ultimate priorities in front of me at all times: marketing and creating content. This helps when I want to check email frequently, the kids want me to read a book in the middle of my work day, or get caught up in researching a topic that ends up on a ‘net tangent (I follow link after link after link… until I am reading something totally fascinatiing that has nothing to do with my business!).
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