My husband and I have been entrepreneurs for over 12 years now. He started his business 12 years ago, and I started my business six years ago.
One of the common misconceptions about running your own business is that being your own boss allows you to set your own schedule and gives you flexibility to spend more time with your family. While there is some truth to this, the fact is in most cases if you are working for yourself, if you aren’t working you aren’t making money.
This brings me to the title of this blog, “I Love Being an Entrepreneur…Until I Get Sick”. The fact is entrepreneurs don’t get sick days. I can’t just call into my boss and say, “I’m feeling under the weather today. I need to take the day off.” I AM the boss. When I have to cancel an appointment with a client or have to spend time away from billable work at my office, guess what. I don’t get paid. Not only do I not get paid, but when I do recover and get back to work I have to spend a good 2 or 3 days playing catch up.
What is the solution to this problem for entrepreneurs?
For the past year or so I’ve been listening to podcasts, reading blogs and watching webinars about automating your business. What does that mean? It basically means breaking down all of your tasks into things that can be automated. Let’s face it. When you feel like you are the only one in your business who can do what you do, you will never be able to scale your business. You have to learn which tasks you are willing to delegate out to other people, or even find software that can automate those processes for you.
Let’s revisit the last part of that sentence up there, FIND SOFTWARE THAT CAN AUTOMATE PROCESSES FOR YOU. Seriously, ya’ll. If you haven’t started doing this, you need to look into it immediately. I’ve already started using some software that does automates my job for me, but I’m always on the search for more. The more of my job I can automate, the better because that means that’s more time I can spend taking care of my customers and building my customer base.
If you are looking to automate your business, here are some great resources to learn how to get started. These people are the pros who I have been learning from this year.
http://www.chalenejohnson.com/
http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
Are you currently automating your business? If so, what are you favorite automation resources?
Great Article. And According to me you have provided amazing solution to this very important problem that many entrepreneurs have to face. Thanks for this valuable content. As I am new to your blog but now I am looking forward to learn more from you. Keep Posting !! Have A Great Day !!
It is difficult if the type of business you run is one in which you must meet with people in real-time. The business I would like to run would sell digital products, so people buy them without any need to interact with me. If I’m present or absent makes no difference. All the work would be in support of passive sales. I understand that is not the business everyone can or wants to run.
Thanks,
Wayne Walls