7.29.07 Join Us for Our Live Chat: Boss Lady! How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur
Want to leave the cubicle behind? Want to learn how to concept and execute a sound business plan? Want to venture on a new career path but don’t know where to begin? Want to learn how to earn a living doing what you’re most passionate about? This Sunday, July 29, four successful female entrepreneurs: Alex Beauchamp, Emira Mears, Lauren Bacon and Michelle Goodman will deliver practical career advice on for women who want to escape the cube.
All three authors will be chatting in the comments space on this post on Sunday, 7pm EST/4pm PST. They will be available to answer all questions posted in the comments field (you can post questions anytime prior the live chat until 8pm EST/5pm PST, when the chat concludes). Since our comments field doesn’t automatically refresh, please hit REFRESH on your browser to see responses and latest comments! Feel free to stop by, chat, share your stories and ask your questions of these women who have forged successful careers as entrepreneurs!
Related Posts
Emira & Lauren: Do You Need a Business Plan?
Michelle Goodman’s Advice for How to Get Your Ducks in a Row Before You Quit
Michelle Goodman’s How do you Survive Work as a Short Timer?
7.29.07 Writers Revealed Live Chat: Boss Lady (pt 1: Meet Our Guests!)
I have a suggestion - perhaps it’s easier for the guests to chat in the Writers Reveled chat room? It can still be used even if there is not a live podcast going on
Hey there,
This is Michelle Goodman, getting this entrepreneurial party started. I thought I’d respond to some of the questions posted on Felicia’s initial announcement of this virtual meeting of the self-employed minds (http://writersrevealed.com/2007/07/22/72907-writers-revealed-live-chat-boss-lady-pt-1-meet-our-guests/).
Thien-Kim asked if working offbeat hours and longer than 40 hours a week when you work for yourself is a good or bad thing. I’m a big fan of working whenever you want/can, as long as doing so doesn’t jeopardize your client relationships. (Say, if they expect you to be available during standard business hours.) As for working more than 40 hours a week, many entrepreneurs do, once you add up all the admin work that goes on top of doing the work their customers hire them to do. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, as long as you are happy and not compromising your health. Many self-employed folks say they don’t mind the extra work when it’s work they love.
MG
Thanks Michelle. Yeah, I tend to find myself working really odd hours, and weekends too, but then I can also take odd hours off to rest or go on vacation, so it works out. I have found it difficult to balance things in the past as I seem to be a serious workaholic, but I’m slowly finding a happy medium. I don’t feel guilty for not always working 24/7. Sometimes it just takes a little time to get in your own groove.
Jennifer asked about staying motivated when you don’t have a standard work schedule (and/or don’t even need the money). Set some ongoing work hours for yourself and stick to them, just as you would a day job. If you don’t take your self-employed gig seriously, who will? It can help to make a spreadsheet to track your progress on a project, so you can see how every single hour you spend on that novel, freelance career, or would-be sweater-knitting empire adds up. I talk about motivation and procrastination and psyching yourself up to work on a side project a lot in Chapter 3 of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide.
Emira - really good point. Again, it’s that aim to find a balance between work and play. I often find folks who are just setting out think they need to have it all perfect to start, and really it’s a matter of trial and error before you find what is suitable to you. I like working later, since I’m more of an night owl, for instance.
Lorissa, I sometimes work the way you do, too, and later reward myself with some serious downtime. I think the best way to balance it out though is with a set schedule and a serious conviction to not overcommit. If you have to work 60 hours a week to make rent, you may be living too large and/or not charging enough! Or you may need to hire some help, something I know the Boss Ladies will have a lot to say about.
I agree with you both, Emira, and Lorissa, (a) that you have to be careful not to become a workaholic, and (b) a bit of trial and error is required to figure out your working patterns. I know many freelancers who come alive when the sun goes down and many others who, like me, do their best work in the morning.
How do you balance or block out your time during the day when you have toddler with a not quite as predictable schedule? Some weeks it feels like I need my husband to keep an eye on her so I can make phone calls. (Daughter is 20 months).
Thanks ladies.
Michelle - yes! I think far too often folks forget that they can charge more, or need to cut out a few expenses in their lives. Rather than overload yourself with work, re-evaluate those areas and see what can change. Hiring someone is definitely something to consider - and something I think most folks are very wary of - myself included. But, as you say, sometimes that’s the way to go.
Emira - so true. Client hours are definitely something you need to take into account. I live in the UK but work US hours since most of my clients are based in the US. It works in my favour…except for the exchange rate that is
Emira - that’s really good to hear. I’m currently chatting with my biz partner about hiring someone. We are currently debating the pros and cons and obviously our biggest concern is being able to pay them. We are a web design and development agency ourselves, so as you know, the work comes in floods and droughts. We are concerned about those droughts. Did you set a certain amount that you had in th bank before taking on someone new? In your experience, is it better to hire an employee (with all the taxs etc. involved) or contract a freelancer?
Thien-Kim, I know that is tough (from what women I’ve met have interviewed have told me, not from personal experience). I know one freelancer who actually has her husband come home from work for lunch so that she can make calls for an hour. I know many others who work when their partner gets off of his/her work so that the childcare is always covered.
As Emira said earlier, sharing the childcare duties with another friend who has little ones can help here, even if it means you can only steal an hour at a time to focus on your business. I also know a lot of freelancers who’ve resigned themselves to work in 30-60 minute “naptime” chunks, whenever those chunks occur. But if there are certain tasks you NEED to do during certain business hours (usually, interacting with clients) and your infant’s sleeping patterns are unpredictable, you may need some help from your partner or a friend or even a babysitter.
Emira, thanks for the tips. One of things about working from home and being your own boss is that we tend to isolate ourselves from the outside word (except for our clients). So I’m trying to make more mommy contacts and contacts with similar interests.
I am not a parent at all, but just read Emira’s response and I loved this idea: “Some will find other moms in a similar boat and trade off childcare days for work days.” - What a clever way to deal with finding more time for work, but also not having to deal with the added cost and concern of daycare.
Lorissa,
While I have never hired an employee, I’ve hired subcontractors and a virtual assistant. Of course hiring subcontractors has little to no financial overhead — you just invest the time in finding and training and managing the people,and you pay them out of the revenue your clients pay you.
Hiring a virtual assistant was a much harder thing to wrap my brain around for financial reasons, but I quickly learned that the time I freed up by having a professional to delegate things to actually enabled me to earn more money. Suddenly I no longer had to worry about/do many marketing and admin tasks that were eating up the time I could be spending working on billable projects (as well as cultivating new client relationships), and I was free to spend more hours a week doing work that paid me.
Right now my solution is to have my husband watch my daughter for an hour 2 or 3 times a week for those phone calls. Unfortunately, it involves both of them in her room with the door shut and she’s screaming for me. But if that’s what I can get, I’ll take it!
Michelle, what kind of work does your virtual assistant do?
Michelle - that’s great! Awhile ago I pondered a VA, but I wasn’t sure exactly what he/she would do since I wasn’t sure what I could let go of (I can be a bit of a control freak) and what I should let go of.
I can definitely see how hiring a VA to deal with all the admin stuff that piles up could be a great thing to grow the business. Perhaps this is something I need to reconsider…and realise I can’t do it all…
I used the VA a lot earlier this year (now we’re on summer hiatus) when I was in full book promo mode. Although book publishers do some publicity, they can’t do everything. So to supplement my publisher’s efforts, I had my VA help me contact bookstores I wanted to do readings/events at, contact media outlets to interview me, and do many event and calendar listings to promote my events. I also had her write promo letters we used to contact media and bookstores, but I can see how all this could easily translate into handling new/future client relations if an entrepreneur wanted to go that route.
I also have thought about having my VA handle my invoicing and some of my research tasks, though we haven’t officially had that conversation yet.
I do know she’s game for anything. As a writer, something she could do that would be incredibly valuable to me would be to scan my articles into PDFs and help me update my blog.
Anyway, to get an idea of some of the other things a VA can help you with, see this woman’s site (not my VA, btw; my VA just moonlights as a VA — it’s not a full-time biz for her):
http://www.bsetc.ca/blog/
This VA a lot of great info on there and offers a pretty informative newsletter. Here is a profile of her on my blog: http://www.anti9to5guide.com/2007/04/11/anti-9-to-5-profile-erin-blaskie/
And I agree, delegating is hard. Sometimes your assistant will screw up or won’t do things exactly the way you’d like. But being able to free up several hours a week is a fabulous investment in your business.
Thanks for the links and info Michelle.
Has anyone adopted the David Allen, Getting Things Done, idea? I know it is very popular currently. I’ve tried it, but haven’t been able to fully adopt it yet, for whatever reason. If you have used the GTD method, do you have any tips for getting started and/or maintaining it?
thanks, guys! for popping in!!!
i would have popped in earlier, however, i literally walked in the door. i’ve been in airline heck for the past seven hours!!
anyway, thank you all for chatting, for adding your valuable input and for inspiring all of us out there to rock out.
cheers, felicia
I’m not familiar with the David Alen’s method. Can you give a brief summary?
Thien-Kim : Oh, the Getting Things Done method is all about allowing you more focused productive time. Here is a very very basic rundown:
1. Write down everything that is on your mind that you want to do - business, personal, things you want to learn, goals you have in 10 years etc.
2. Once you have these all down on paper (the idea here is to get everything out of your head) you need to decide if there is a next action for the item, whether you can just delete it/throw it away/forget it, or whether you can delegate it to someone else. A next action, is the next physical thing you can do to move that item forward. For example, if on my list I had “Clear out garage” my next action may be “Buy boxes” (for allt he junk to be organised in).
3. If there is a next action, and it can be done in 5 minutes, do it now. If not, schedule a time to do it.
4. You should also have a project list or any and all projects going on. A project, by David Allen,is described as any item that requires more than 1 action. Once a week you should review this project list to make sure you are on track. It’s the Weekly Review.
That’s the basic gist of it. It’s all about getting things out of your head and organising them into manageable parts.
I hope that makes sense. I’m not 100% clued up on GTD. Some sites that may be of interest though are: 43folders.com , zenhabits.com
Thanks Lorissa. I’m up for anything that might work for me, and I can/want to stick with. I’ll check out those websites.
What are other common problems/issues that you have seen with self-employed women? How do these issues keep us from being successful?
Thien-Kim, (this is Felicia posting on behalf of Michelle)
Another thought. A lot of women I interviewed for my book said that when their kids were old enough to walk and talk, they used this trick: Mom would keep the extra-special-fun toys in her office, or maybe even a mini worktable for the kids, so that the kids would be occupied by something that was exciting, new, and an activity they didn’t normally get to do. These moms also said they’d spend a few minutes reading to or coloring with their kids before sitting down to work. That way the kids were less likely to interrupt quite so quickly. I know this is a couple years away for you, but i thought i’d mention it.
I’ve heard tons about GTD, but didn’t know specifically what it entails. I’m pretty sure the blog Lifehacker.com talks about it a lot. Thanks for the awesome summary, Lorissa.
Thanks for chatting, everyone. You can always visit me and my book (and blog!) at the below URL…
THE ANTI 9-TO-5 GUIDE by Michelle Goodman
Seal Press | Now in bookstores | www.anti9to5guide.com
greetings all!
on behalf of emira, she wanted to thank everyone for jumping in and she’ll be posting some terrific advice on her blog: http://bosslady.ca
cheers, f.
Yes, a huge thank you to Michelle and Emira for taking the time to share your experience and expertise with us. Looking forward to reading more on your blogs and your books! Thanks again!
Thank you for all the great info and links! I’ll definitely be visiting your website.
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