Are you one of the many millions of parents with small kids wishing you had more energy to grow your business? Or, perhaps, you’re an entrepreneur working a full time gig that has nothing to do with your passion? How do you, then, find the time to do what YOU want to do if this is your life right now?
The simple answer is… focus.
That might sound so simple you assume I’m being sarcastic. I’m not. You see, I suspect that most people confuse the word focus with the act of just doing and being busy. Never resting. I mean, you’re going and doing and moving and pushing – so it’s hard to imagine how you could be any more focused, right?
But, honestly, understanding focus versus busy is the make it or break it for people who believe in – and want to grow – their own business.
Let me give you this quick down and dirty list of THINGS YOU MAY NEED TO SACRIFICE when you are first building a business (while you have a full time job and/or children, etc.)…
1) Working extra hours at your job.
Day job, that is. Where you are an employee for someone else who owns a business. The people who work for me in the office are doing so on my behalf – yet they know that I want them to build their own businesses. If I didn’t, I would be a full blown hypocrite.
There is abundance in this world. Not just of money, not just of customers, but of awesome people.
I have around six former employees who are either in the millionaires club or pretty dang close to it because they’ve started their own businesses — and that’s flippin’ cool!
You have to sacrifice being the ultimate employee and working through your lunch and on the weekends and long into the late evening hours for someone else.
2) Weekend social activities.
Am I telling you to be an introvert? Indeed, I am! Until your business has legs. Now when this was the case for Bret and I, we had policies. We didn’t double date. We declined going to weddings. We, of course, would send a nice gift and say “thank you so much!” – but we knew a wedding meant six to seven hours.
Weekends were crucial for us to get in that much needed time to ensure we would arrive at, what is now, our current reality.
3) TV.
Yeah, and that’s coming from someone who loves her reality TV. That is my guilty pleasure. Just some really bad train wreck TV! But I didn’t have that luxury when I was starting my business. I never watched TV. I didn’t watch movies. It’s something you must sacrifice now if you are working with children in your home and/or a day job.
4) Mindless activities.
OMG, if you are building your own business, y’all need to delete every single dumb game that’s on your phone. What about scrolling through Facebook, looking at random things on Pinterest, playing dumb video games, and, you know… just sitting around doing mindless things that serve no purpose other than to just turn your brain off? No. You can do that later. Right now, you don’t have that luxury.
5) Cut back on your hobbies.
Especially the time consuming hobbies. Here’s why: I want you to enjoy them later, but you’re going to prolong that time frame by indulging in them now! So yeah, golfing, painting, spending hours shopping at the mall. Hobbies that take a lot of time tend to be pretty expensive. If you enjoy them, fantastic. Not now. Later. I’m not saying one hundred percent… just that while you’re in this mode, it needs to be pretty rare. Not a weekly thing.
6) Doing those things that you think are saving you money.
Do you personally need to create that plugin for your website, edit the podcast or You Tube video, or analyze the data from a spreadsheet or whatever it is for you? Just fill in the blank.
You need to outsource.
Honestly, it’s going to benefit you ten fold. It’s actually a mindset shift that you have got to understand. You do not have the luxury nor the time to be able to figure out everything. You are costing yourself time, money, energy and, again… prolonging the time that it will take for you to reach your dream.
Let me know in the comments which of these 6 things you are going to follow through with TODAY!
Veronica says
All of these are so true! But my best take away is #6. I struggle with delegating, but given my time constrains it is a MUST.