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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:

Set boundaries- Easier said than done, I know, but this is crucial to developing some semblance of work/life balance. What areas of your business can you set boundaries? Here are some examples:

• Say no to requests to pick your brain 
• Develop a starting and shut down process for your work day
• In fact, try not to work every week night and every weekend
• Honor your expertise
• If someone wants to schedule time with you, utilize a calendar scheduling system like Calendly or Acuity Scheduling 

Automate- Chances are, if you see me posting to my social media profiles, they were posts scheduled hours earlier using Buffer. Also, I develop a content editorial calendar at least one month in advance, consisting of my blog post topics and newsletter content so I know what I’m going to write about and share. Automating tasks can be automatic and scheduled well in advance to avoid scrambling.

Delegate where needed- Even if you aren’t ready to hire someone, there will be times where you’ll need up in both your business and your personal life. What awesome ways you can delegate tasks in your business and personal life? For your business, you can hire a virtual assistant, bring in volunteers or students to assist you, or have a bookkeeper look over your finances. For your personal life, you can use a laundry pick up and drop off service, hire a babysitter, or invest in a home cleaning service.

Lean on your communities– Indulge in your favorite interests and activities with friends and family. And yes, your friends and families may also be fellow business owners. Non-business communities can help you gain insight into various aspects of your business (how your content resonate and is understood by people outside of your field/industry) and offer a different perspective. Also, it’s great to have activities that aren’t related to your business focus.

Build a business around the life you want to have- And not the other way around. When you do it the opposite way–build a life around your business–it will be easy to become resentful of your business. So much so, that you may begin to question your decision to work for yourself.

…And That’s It! 

This is Part Five of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. If this is your first time coming to the series, be sure to read Parts One, Two, Three  and Four. Thanks for following this series. When you finally make the transition from employee to self-employed, come back and let me know how it’s going.

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