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Welcome to Part Five of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busting some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed. In Part Two, I shared some of my current tools and processes that help me run my business. In Part Three, we went through an exercise to discover your passions and how they can translate into income, and in Part Four we focused on the importance of building community. To round out the series, let’s discuss work/life balance.

Before running my business full-time, I worked on it during early mornings, weeknights, and weekends while also working full-time at my day job. Needless to say, I had no life.

At my day job, I had parameters around when I could work on my business. When I eventually left in 2016, suddenly it felt like I had too much time on my hands. But I took advantage of it, throwing myself head-first into my business… only to hit a wall and burn out 4 months later. Fortunately, I had several months of income saved up, and was able to take a month off from client work and focus mostly on blogging, but I learned one thing: Without work/life balance, working for yourself can be a blessing, and a curse. 

Sometimes, we tend to suffer from “greener grass syndrome”. This is becoming more prevalent in the age of social media, as we tend to envy the lives of other people. It’s very easy to admire someone from afar and to give accolades because leaving your day job to work for yourself is not an easy decision to make. It’s even easier to be at the beginning stages of your business and compare yourself to other business owners. But as lawyer and business woman Rachel Rogers of Hello Seven says,

“Say goodbye to comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. Even me. We’re all at our own stages in our businesses and believe me, everyone has some kind of ugly sh*t going on behind the curtain.”

It’s nice to schedule my days how I want to choose meaningful projects and clients to work with, but when I was at my day job (before starting my business) I was able to “shut it on and off”. When 5pm rolled around, I was out of there. I didn’t have to think (that much) about my clients or co-workers, and if I wanted to start past 5pm to get some work done, I could but I tried not to make it a habit. If something were to pop up that needed to be added to my to-do list, I would add it but not work on that task until the next day at work.

These days, I’m not able to shut my brain off completely. I’m constantly thinking about my business. As a solopreneur, you’re the administrator, content creator, social media and marketing manager, media relations, client/customer service representative, and more.

As someone not quite ready to relinquish control of the many hats I wear, I try my best to be mindful of ways I can create a balance between my personal and professional lives. Here are some pieces of advice I’ve found for developing work/life balance. This advice works for people interested in starting a business as well as people wanting a better balance between their professional and personal lives:

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Welcome to Part Four of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busting some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed. In Part Two, I shared some of my current tools and processes that help me run my business. In Part Three, we went through an exercise to discover your passions and how they can translate into income. Today, let’s talk about building community.

Building a business around something you love is exciting, but it can also be lonely. I thought as a introvert, I would love being by myself. While I still do, sometimes I reminisce on the days where I had co-workers to chat with and bounce ideas off of.

When I started entertaining the idea of leaving my job, I had a community of people (mainly two friends interested in leaving their jobs, my sister, and my mastermind group) who knew this was my plan. I sought out people who had made the leap to ask for advice, and when I gave my resignation notice I felt more comfortable going public with my decision.

Along the way, I’ve worked to build two distinct communities that have supported me:

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Welcome to Part Three of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busting some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed, and in Part Two I shared some of my current tools and processes that help me run my business. Today, let’s discuss what happens when you think you have too many ideas (aka being multipassionate.)

What does it mean to be “multipassionate”? 

The term “multipassionate entrepreneur” was coined by Marie Forleo. As someone who has worked on Wall Street, as a dance choreographer and fitness trainer for Crunch Fitness, a life coach, and more, Marie knows a thing or two about having multiple strengths and passions that she’s turned into revenue streams.

I jokingly tell people that my business started as a blog. When I started blogging in 2011, all I cared about what sharing my opinion on feminism, reproductive justice, and women and girls of color. By the time I started entertaining the idea of working for myself, I had added more of my voice as a social worker, program designer and evaluator into my blog pieces.

I started following Marie and other influencers like Rosetta Thurman of Happy Black Woman, Rachel Rodgers of Hello Seven, social media coach and trainer Natalie Gouche, and more. I also looked into my inner circle to gain inspiration from my friends Chanel Jaali, Taja Lindley, Miriam Zoila Pérez, and Arielle Loren. I even joined Marie’s B School program, and had the chance to join a mastermind group led by web designer and brand strategist Kriss Rowly. Each of these people have built a name and brand around multiple passions.

I saw the most obvious benefit of being multipassionate: I can a business and life around the things I care about most. Also, having multiple passions can lead to generating multiple streams of income for my business. But what I learned was that, while the idea of being multipassionate was exciting, I felt a little all over the place.

So, I inadvertently created this process to help me to identify how to make it all come together (or do some downsizing):

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Welcome to Part Two of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busted some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed. Today, I’m going to share some of tools I’ve been using to keep myself organized, along with some processes I’m constantly tweaking so I can spend less time on mundane tasks.

But first, spoiler alert:

You’ll always be testing and tweaking

Solopreneurs tend to be very DIY, and when it comes to keeping organized, getting paid on time, and knowing what I’m doing from day to day, I’m always testing out tools and processes, integrating them into my business, finding another tool or process that can potentially make my life easier, and trying that out. If you’re like me and like doing test runs for a period of time to test the waters, this may be fun for you. Some things work out, while others don’t. And some things you’ll know right off the bat aren’t for you. It’s like trying out a new face cleanser that breaks you out after 1-2 uses.

First, let’s start with tools. These are either tools I’ve been using for some time or are currently testing out.

Note: This isn’t a sponsored post nor does this post contain any affiliate links. In fact, these businesses, influencers, and developers have no idea that I’m sharing their products with you. Some of these tools are paid products while others are free (and there are plenty of free alternatives for some paid products, in some cases). Also, since my business centers on providing services rather than products (for the time being), this post centers more on that, though I feel these tools can also apply to product developers. Now that that’s out of the way:

Tools

Website

Your website is your virtual business card. It gives people a sense of what your business offers and also gives them a glimpse into your personality.

• Website Hosting: Bluehost– I’ve been using Bluehost for several years now. When I transferred my website hosting and domain name from Go Daddy, I found the process to be very seamless and straightforward. I’ve noticed that Bluehost is routinely doing maintenance which sometimes gets in the way of my website loading, and when this happens, I’m always met with very courteous customer service providers that are understanding and prompt. Another feature I enjoy is BlueHost’s one-click WordPress install to create a WordPress site via Bluehost.
• Website Content Management: WordPress– I often tell people that my business first started as a blog. A Tumblr blog, specifically. I started blogging in 2011 on Tumblr, and while I liked Tumblr, it didn’t have the functionality I needed and trying to get widgets to work in the themes I tested out sucked. When I noticed’s BlueHost’s one-click WordPress install feature, I immediately switched over to WordPress. Note the difference between WordPress.com versus WordPress.org. WordPress.org requires you to have your own web server, whereas WordPress.com can be hosted by Bluehost or whichever host you use. I’ve found WordPress easy to set up and navigate, but many website developers are very proficient in building WordPress sites. Creating blog posts and website pages is a breeze, and WordPress routinely updates my website so that I have the latest in functionality. Also, WordPress has lots of free themes, but I found myself more attracted to premium themes, like the next tool.
• Website Theme: Avada– Whenever I would find a website design that I liked, I would wonder, “What WordPress theme is that?”. Turns out there’s a website to help you figure that out. Also, many of the designs I liked were made with Avada. I have fun creating my website and relaunching it in November 2015, and I’ve gotten compliments on how clean my site looks and how easy it is to navigate. If spending time designing a website isn’t your thing, many developers are knowledgeable on Avada and other themes.

Invoice and Accounting 

Getting paid and tracking your expenses and time can be a drawn out process. Or not.

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2018 will mark 2 years for me in full-time self-employment. For my one year anniversary in May 2017, I shared 10 lessons learned in my first year self-employment.

Those 10 lessons haven’t changed much since I shared them, but for the next three months in the Ask Nicole series, I’m going to speak about three important aspects of self-employment, from the perspective of a solopreneur.

A solopreneur is a business owner who works and runs her or his own business alone. Different from an entrepreneur (who goes through more traditional means of building an running a business), a solopreneur can choose whether to contract out or outsource certain types of work they may not have the skillset for or the time/patience to do).

Over the past few months, I’ve seen several friends and colleagues make the leap into working for themselves. It’s exciting to see! I’ve offered to share with them aspects of my journey, lessons learned, and tools that are currently working for me.

Five themes have come up when I’ve spoken with my friends–mindset, tools and processes, ways to bring in income, support, and work/life balance–and I’m going to touch on each one this month. Today, let’s talk about what I think is the most important aspect of maintaining your sanity as a solopreneur: Mindset.

Transitioning from Employee to Self Employed

With the exception of one family member, no one in my immediate life at the time had worked for themselves. Plus, I come from a family of employees that stay with their employer until retirement. When you don’t see examples of what you want to do, it’s easy to think that what you want isn’t feasible.

When I started thinking more about building my consulting business, it was with the intention of wanting to make extra income on the side. When I got to the point where I enjoyed working with my consulting clients and getting paid for speaking engagements (essentially #ReclaimingMyTime) more so than doing work that someone else handed to me, I started fantasizing about how working for myself could look like. I also sought out people who were working for themselves. When you see people doing what you want to do, it’s easier to imagine it for yourself.

And as it turns out, handing in your resignation letter is the easy part. Transitioning from employee to self employed is as much a mental game as it is a physical one.

Solopreneur myths, busted (and what to put in their place)

There are lots of myths out there about solopreneurs. Here are some common ones:

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