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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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Have a question? Let me know.

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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Have a question? Let me know.

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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