Small Business Is Hard, Yo
The end of October in Maine is when everyone starts to notice their seasonal depression. The days are short, when it’s not gray & rainy. Add in being a small business owner & sometimes you have a recipe for disaster. The seasonal slump can kill your momentum, but it doesn’t have to. Here are my tips to keep things going, even when you don’t want to:
If possible, schedule your day to “maximize your daylight”.
I learned this one from one of my clients! Now, instead of walking my dog after work, I take an hour break in the middle of my day that starts with a dog walk & ends in 15 minutes of things I can get done around the house: empty the dishwasher, switch the laundry, maybe a quick run with the vacuum before I go back to my office.
This simple practice exposes us to more Vitamin D & helps make the transition back to home (even when we work from home) a bit easier.
Create some sort of schedule. Please. For me.
Bear with me on this. When I was a new mom at 22, I was determined to have that super-easy-going-can-sleep-anywhere kid. That … didn’t happen. My kid needed routine. Turns out, so do I.
For many of us, especially in baby business land, we’re doing this as a side-hustle. I sure am. There are only so many hours in a day. So you have to use them wisely. Make sure that you have set working hours & try to pick something off the list - even if it’s low-hanging fruit like a blog post about how hard it is to run a business by yourself.
3. Everyday is a chance to start fresh.
As a neurospicy individual, I absolutely understand that you can have the best of intentions & still have days where you get next to nothing done. Today, I’m worried about root canal pt. 2 tomorrow & being ghosted by a potential client. My arm hurts from getting my flu & covid shots yesterday. I’ve knit & wandered the house more then I’ve worked today. It happens.
Tomorrow, I get a chance to try again. As I like to say, showing up is half the battle.
The moral of the story is take care of yourselves, babes.