Show Notes:

Many people dream of having their own business. It may seem easy from another perspective, but when you’re in the shoes of a business owner, you might realize that it’s not always rainbows and sunshine.

For today’s episode, I want to make a few points on the difference of being self-employed and being a business owner, and their similarities. Moreover, I also want to introduce you to the idea of automation and outsourcing to help you continue living the life you’ve always dreamed of even when you have a business to run.

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert! Today, I want to talk about building a business and not another job. So many people dream of working for themselves, being their own boss, having their freedom, to take on, projects they love, and they have this dream – and it’s great.

It’s great to have dreams, but what they don’t realize though is that there’s a huge difference between building a business and being self-employed. Business owners scale their income. They strategize, they think about certain things. Self-employed people traded dollars for hours. Business owners leverage the skills and talents of others as well as themselves Self-employed people rely only on their own skills. I’m not saying this for you to be discouraged. It’s just that every business started out self-employed, they just don’t stay there. And so I want to talk about things that can help you sort of build a sustainable business and not just another job. And these are things that I’ve learned over time. Don’t try and do it all yourself. It took me a really long time to learn this. To build a sustainable business requires that you leverage the talents and time of others as well as yourself. It might not see, it might seem cost-effective to do everything yourself especially at the start because you might have more time, money, and it’s but it is a path to burnout and stress, and that’s not why you’re doing this. Separate tasks into being things that you love and you are especially suited for that you’re good at and you enjoy doing, and things that you dislike and you are not good at. Separate those tasks, then make a solid plan to get those that you’re not so good at off your list.

Either automate it, outsource it, whatever it is that you have to do, or cut it out from your business altogether. Do what you needed. If you feel like you can’t afford to outsource it all right now, start with the one thing that you tend to procrastinate the most on, even if it’s just for three hours a month. It will make a difference. The other thing you need to remember is don’t allow yourself to work all the time. The trouble with being your own boss and technology these days is that when you work at home, is that you live at work, and that means there’s no clear line about when your work day is and your home day is because there’s always work to do. Always. And it’s easy to find yourself working every available moment because you need to make this work, or because if you don’t, stuff will happen or you’ll miss something, or you’ll miss an opportunity. And normally, this is to the detriment of maybe at your health, your sanity, and maybe other relationships.

So, you can avoid this by setting and maintaining clear work hours or office hours, having a room specifically for your work so you can close it when you’re done, and scheduling time and your calendar for family and other activities as well. Please do this, take time for yourself, and my last sort of thing about getting a business and not a job. Though this is, by any means, not the last thing ever because there are so many things that go with this, but vacations and downtime are very important. Don’t create a business that requires you to be in the office every day. At the start, yes, it might be all about you, and you might need to be available more. But even when you start, you should be thinking about the day when you have to be off-grid for extended periods of time. So that cruise you want to take, it’s a week-long cruise and there’s no internet, will your business survive? So think about that from the very start. Can you get trusted contractors that can handle things when you’re not available? Can you leverage automation tools such as autoresponders and systems that will work while you’re not there? Start creating repeatable systems so that you’re not always reinventing the wheel.

While you might not be able to hit the road with no internet access for weeks at a time But with some forethought and planning, you can create a team and all the systems that they need to successfully run your business without becoming overwhelmed and overworked. And I’m working on that all the time.

So thank you for listening. This is Janice from The Career Introvert, helping you just be awesome with your career and your business.

If you have any questions, please email me at janice@thecareerintrovert.com.