Balancing Small Business with Your Personal Life

As you might be able to tell by now, this blog is not written by Earth Berry herself, but rather a close person in her life who gets to share her story from a third person perspective. The irony of that fact in combination with the nature of this post is quite evident. She’s busy. She is the sole producer and designer of her products, and she works very hard to maintain all matters of her online shop as well as in-person locations where her products are sold. However, we have both learned a few tricks about how to make this easier for us.

Here is some advice I’ve learned about how to balance your small business with your personal life:

1. Realize when you’ve ‘made it’
   • If you were to ask a hundred people what it means to ‘make it’, I’m certain you will invariably hear a hundred different ways to describe it. That makes me very wary at all that one could ‘make it’ according to any solid definition. So, I offer this very important advice firstly: you’ve probably already made it.
   • Maybe you haven’t reached your goal of six figures a year, and maybe you don’t have consistent sales, but you are well on your way to something amazing. Set a realistic goal for yourself. Ours was to be completely self-sustaining while acquiring a long-term savings for our family. We live modestly and don’t have to drive to work in the morning. We rarely know what day of the week it is. I’d say we’ve ‘made it’.
2. Delegate
   • It’s time I take my own advice on this one, but the truth remains that it is crucial to delegate your work whenever it may be an option to do so.
   • We’re not social media masters. Most of us are just posting random photos of our products with simple descriptions just for the purpose of putting our names out there. That doesn’t really do much. You have to post with the intention of leading your prospective customers to potential sales. Maybe it’s time to find a person to delegate some of your social media work.
   • You’ll need a handsome husband to do your taxes for you. I’ve said too much..
3. Embrace the fact that you can travel in the off season
   • We just got back from a trip to Florida not long ago, as is the tradition of many Michigan folk in the winter. We went about three weeks before tourist season begins and we were able to enjoy all sorts of things that normally would have been a crowded nightmare. That fact is directly related to our ability to work from home. How cool is that?
   • Spend more time with your kids if you have them. We get to drop our son off every morning and we are both there for him the moment he’s done with school. The only advice I could offer in this regard is to close your computer when it’s time to close your computer. That means you have to set your goals for the day and accomplish them before the evening. After that it’s family time, and this rule cannot be broken.

What other advice could you offer? We are also on a quest for learning, and I welcome your comments and questions below.