How to Maximize Your Time, Money and Energy While Launching Your Biz & Living Your Life

I recently stumbled across an old article I wrote titled What I Did To Get Certified & Launch My Biz While Working 50 Hrs/Wk. As I finished writing it, I started reflecting…

How did I maximize my resources so I could actually get my business launched and grow it enough to quit my day job? And I do remember having a life…how did that happen?

Let’s see, shall we?

{insert Wayne’s World do-do-do-do hands here – it’s flashback time}

Here are my best tips to live your life, launch your biz, and not have your head explode:

Figure out your Phase One and set a deadline for it. What’s the most impact you can make with your business launch for the least amount of time, money and effort? Once you made your Phase One checklist (which includes an offer and an announcement email at the minimum) , break it out into smaller steps and schedule them out. Setting a deadline – especially one you tell others about and they hold you to! – and showing up to do the work often is key to ensuring you’ll cross the finish line.

Have a “Suck It Name-of-the-Company-You-Work-For Fund”. This is, essentially, your severance. The only difference is that you give it to yourself when you quit. For me, I only put the money I made coaching into this fund, and that probably made my quitting date a year or so later than it could have been. I’d encourage you to put aside your side hustle income and birthday money and any bonuses you get at work and what you save by bringing lunch to work twice a week, etc. It is so motivating to see this bank account grow, and know that you have a soft cushion when you quit so you don’t need to hit the Emergency Button super quickly if you’re not making what you need to be right away.

Track your income and expenses. You’d be amazed at how much you can write-off when it’s tax time! When I started out I used Mint (free + pretty = sold), but you can do this with a spreadsheet easily. Just make sure you’re looking at this at least once/month so you don’t get overwhelmed and keep putting it off.

Make self-care a priority. Despite what women usually think, self-care is not selfish. It’s actually the one thing – the best thing! – you can do to give the best of yourself to others. Figure out what self-care means to you, and make sure you’re setting and enforcing those healthy boundaries. That might mean treating your yoga class time as sacred. It might mean getting 7 hours of sleep every night no matter what. It might mean deleting the Instagram app so you don’t spend hours scrolling for no reason. Whatever self-care looks like to you, put it at the top of your priority list.

Clue people in. Your family might not be supportive yet, but that’s OK. Lay down the groundwork slowly, sharing your vision and dreams as well as the steps you’re taking to get there. Believe me, when your family realizes that you have a plan and that you’ve been consistently working towards it – with legitimate things to show for it, like a website and your first client(s) – they’ll start coming around. But better yet: find people who get it right away, whether it’s a friend, a coach, or a community of likeminded women in a course you take (hi!). Feeling supported right off the bat is priceless.

Keep your eyes on your own paper, and do what feels good to you. I once worked with a client who wanted a marketing plan for her biz. She’s been working in it for 3ish years, and didn’t utilize social media at all. We were able to hone in pretty quickly as to what platforms she liked best and how she most wanted to engage with her customers, and she was shocked. She couldn’t believe she was “allowed” to only have a newsletter and an Instagram account. What about Pinterest, webinars, Snapchat, Facebook ads and groups and business pages, podcasts, yada-yada-yada? Yeah, no. Have you ever heard the saying that if you market yourself to everyone, you really market yourself to nobody? If you try to reach everyone on every platform with every marketing strategy (especially when you’re first starting out!), then you’ll reach nobody. Stick to where it feels good to chat with your people, and that’s where you’ll resonate and shine.

Spend your money on learning, guidance, and skill-building. Trust me when I say I kept my business spending lean for years. I was the queen of DIY, thinking the more places I could save, the larger my bank account would grow. It took me seven years to break an income of six figures, and guess when that happened? When I invested in my own first business coach. Coincidence? Nope. More like a law of the business building land! In comparison, one of my amazing 90 Day Business Launch alum hit that number in just a couple of years - and has a multi-six-figure business only 4 years after completing the program. If you don’t trust me, trust her when I say to spend your money on the guidance and support you’ll need to build an impactful and effective business foundation right out of the gate! 

Ok, so.

I know it’s tough to believe, but you can work your day job, hustle your side biz, quit said day job and never have to look back. If I can ditch my stable job in finance in the middle of the recession to become a creative business coach (of all silly things!) and be here over a decade later(!) with a multi-six-figure biz (!!), you can do it, too. Let’s do this.