3 Ways Children Add Indispensable Value to Your Business (yes, even the crazy ones)
Have you ever dreamed about your ideal work day? You know, the one that looks like this:
- Go to bed whenever you wish
- Sleep all night uninterrupted
- Wake up feeling refreshed – whatever time that might be
- Work however long you want during the day
- Build an incredible empire of success.
My life? Nothing like this. I was over here living a life riddled by distractions, people who wanted to eat every 4 minutes, kids who needed an education, a baby who didn’t like her swing, and nights that most certainly included at least 2 interruptions.
It was easy to have a pity party and to think that EVERYONE is living life at the carnival except me. But here’s what I’ve come to realize: Children and all of their blessed distractions, and needs can absolutely be the best thing for our business.
Yes, it’s hard.
Yes, we could get sooooooo much more accomplished without them.But.
If we embrace motherhood, embrace the crazy, embrace this season, it can be beautiful.
3 Ways Children Add Indispensable Value:
While navigating the the logistics of children we are more intensely completed to:
- Streamline our business and cut the fluff.
- Work smarter not harder on the things that matter.
- Identify what is actually bringing value to our business and focus there instead of filling time with tasks that don’t truly move us forward.
I’m convinced that too much time to dedicate to our business can actually hurt us in the long run. I know that sounds crazy and I really can’t believe I’m typing it.
But I do believe it’s true. There are so many tasks that “feel” productive or they’re fun – maybe we get a thrill of checking all the boxes and maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that they are essential to our businesses, but are they?
Take a hard look at your dollars. Look at your profits. Ask yourself, what tasks are truly responsible for the bulk of these profits?
Because there are a lot of business tasks that are fun and even fulfilling, but they don’t actually bring dollars in.
And if time is limited, we’ve got to streamline.
- Evaluate: what tasks are “Income Producing”?
- Delegate: what can you outsource to keep you focused on the jobs only you can do?
- Purge: revisit time spent on Social Media and purge anything that is not adding direct value to your business
But it is also the biggest time zapper in the history of forever and requires the most intentional discipline to use it effectively.
3 Things to Ask About Social Media:
- Do you need to be posting multiple times a day or would once daily be sufficient?
- Are dollars actually coming in from social media marketing or would some of that time be better spent focusing on individuals or face to face (this will be different for everyone)?
- Are you creating engagement and community in your social media spaces or are they just filling time without delivering results? (If the results aren’t there, it’s time to tweak and refine. Enroll in a social media course for business, clean up the number of groups your a part of, set a timer for how long you’ll be on, and get in and get out.)
Evaluating time is a constant endeavor and must be revisited often. It’s not always fun – I’d rather have a clean slate to do with however I pleased!
But, having children forces us to figure out what is most important and to not kid ourselves about where our success is coming from.
We may not have the luxury of massive blocks of time to devote to our side hustle.
But it’s okay.
We can choose to make the absolute best of what we do have, remembering that this is a season. These little people won’t be with us forever!
