Business Spotlight Series [4 of 4]
It’s our last business spotlight, and I can’t wait to share Meghan’s story with you! If you’ve missed any of my previous business spotlights, make sure to check out the first blog post in this series!
Now, let’s meet Meghan!
Meghan loved her job as a corporate accountant. When she got pregnant with her daughter, however, she decided she wanted to stay home with her while she was little. Meghan knew she needed something besides momming to work on while she stayed home, and decided to invest in herself.
With a brain geared towards finance, Meghan quickly developed a business plan and built a floral design business from the ground up. In order to make her business work, Meghan invests all of her time into her new job. Initially, Meghan thought she could grow her business during nap time and on weekends when her husband was home. As time goes on, however, the business requires more and more time.
Meghan truly loves both motherhood and entrepreneurship. But in trying to do both well, she feels like she’s failing, and things are slipping through the cracks.
She spends her mornings writing emails while her daughter watches tv shows. She takes her daughter to her doctor’s appointment, and ends up missing a flower delivery. She tries bringing her daughter to the studio, but everyone is miserable and no work gets done.
Meghan’s thankful for a full season of booked weddings, but it means she’s missing out on Mother’s Day, birthdays, fun weekend trips, and more.
Meghan is exhausted. She wants to be the mother, and the business owner, she always imagined she’d be.
What does Meghan need to do to get unstuck??
Meghan needs to determine her sales goal. By identifying an exact number she needs or wants to make each year, she can be clear about her financial goals.
Next, Meghan needs to figure out the number of weekends she’s willing to be away from her family. If she’s willing to be gone fifteen weekends of the year, then she can divide her sales goal by fifteen. That tells her what her minimum needs to be for each wedding.
Meghan needs to hire help! First, she needs to identify the tasks that she dreads the most and that take her away from her family unnecessarily. For example, she doesn’t need to email brides! She can hire someone to do that-- even someone virtual! Or, she can use email templates to make emailing a breeze.
Meghan probably doesn’t need to process all of her own flowers. She could hire a few people to receive her orders and process her flowers. It wouldn’t take them very long, and that’s an additional day she can stay home with her baby!By creating non-negotiables and outsourcing tasks, Meghan can get some time back and run her business even better than before.
Finally, Meghan needs to find someone to be with her daughter at least one day a week, so she can work uninterrupted. That might mean hiring a babysitter, or letting her mother have a grandma day, or swapping kids with another working mom one day a week. Whatever needs to happen, Meghan needs one day of uninterrupted work time!
I remember feeling like Meghan feels! Like it’s impossible to be both a profitable business owner and a great mom. But it’s not! And many women are better moms when they have work that’s all their own.
It just takes boundaries and balance to make it all work, but Meghan needs the wisdom of someone who has gone before her to give her permission and guidance!
If you’ve seen yourself in any of these four business spotlight stories, I hope you’ve felt comforted that you’re not alone.
Hopefully, you’ve found guidance on what your next steps can be.
You might feel stuck in your business. You might be frustrated. Maybe you’re out of time, energy, and hope.
If that’s where you are, I want to remind you that five short years ago, I was $100,000 in debt, working 16 hour days, ashamed of what my business had become.
Even then, I wasn’t stuck in that story. I got my hands on all the education I could. I read books, went to workshops, and took courses. I believed that I could make my business work, even though I’d seen no evidence to support that belief.
