More Than WE Know

In last week’s post I wrote about how I don’t want to work a four hour work week.  I’d rather have a business that I enjoyed so much, any thought of time simply disappeared, so that forty hours felt like four.

Later last week I met with a client who was in exactly that position.  Her business was so enjoyable that it was consuming every waking moment.  It was interfering with her ability to spend time with her family and on her hobbies. 

She had intentionally left the corporate world because she wanted more flexibility in her schedule. And now here she was in her own business, recreating the same kind of crazy schedule herself.

On the surface this appears to be a simple time management issue - reschedule priorities, delegate, delay, delete tasks, until everything fits within the time available.

But after we spent some time digging deeper, we realized that this issue was not just about learning to schedule time more effectively - it was about fear and self-confidence.

When my client was first starting her business, she felt she needed to always be available. She was in such a hurry to fill her client roster, that she agreed to appointments at any time regardless of what it meant to her personal life.

This might have been appropriate in the first few months of building her business, but it is not a sustainable practice.

In order to build the life she wanted, she was going to have to learn to say no to some opportunities.  And she was going to have to have confidence that her prospective clients would still want her services even if she were not always available.

Limiting your availablity has many of the same fears and issues associated with it as does asking for more money. 

Setting boundaries is difficult for many Women Entrepreneurs.  Many times one of our main motivations to go into business is to help other people. So limiting our availability or asking for more money both feel uncomfortable and selfish.

It’s important to remember that you are building a business that must meet your needs as well as your customers.  If you don’t create practices that are sustainable financially, physically and emotionally, you won’t be around long enough to help any customers. 

After some further consideration, my client came up with a “work schedule” that felt right to her. It allowed her to take her children to school and be home when they got home. It allowed her to see clients or attend networking events two nights per week and to work from home one night per week. But it kept her Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends free. 

It was great to see her physically relax as she set boundaries to safeguard her time and health.

As we worked through her schedule she began to realize that many of her clients probably could accomodate her new schedule.  They might have preferred their old time slots, but they would rather adjust their scheules and still work with her, than go work with someone else.

She also needed to realize that not everyone would agree to the new schedule. Some might leave. And that’s okay. She’s building a sustainable practice and those clients are not the ones she needs to sustain it.  By leaving, they were freeing up her energy and time to focus on obtaining new clients who could fit her schedule.

So, how about you? Are the hours you are working sustainable? Are you honoring your own time as much as your customers?  If not, what’s holding you back?

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