Today we’re continuing our planning discussion. You should have gotten your Chocolate Banana, your Chocolate Banana’s Vision and Researched your Banana’s competition all from our previous posts, so what’s next?

“The nerve of those Whos. Inviting me down there – on such short notice! Even if I wanted to go my schedule wouldn’t allow it. 4:00, wallow in self pity; 4:30, stare into the abyss; 5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one; 5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me – I can’t cancel that again; 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing… I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness. But what would I wear? ”

- The Grinch, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”

 

Budgeting is more than just money. 

When I started planning for my business I had the money flow all set up to see what I needed to make, what I wanted to make and how much work I needed to bring in to make that number happen. This is a step that i think a lot of people miss because it takes a lot of time and energy to put it together if you don’t have a good relationship with your calculator. There are a lot of great websites and templates out there that can help you make sense of all the numbers. SCORE.org is a great resource for new small business owners and they have great templates and worksheets to help you figure out a money flow for your project. Mint.com is another cool site that lets you organize all of the money you have now and track how you’re spending money and how you can start saving some money as well.

From my experience though, budgeting your time is just as important as budgeting your money.

I had all the money taking care of, for the most part,  but what I didn’t account for was the time it was going to take to make all my caviar dreams come true.

When my daughter was teeny tiny, I could count on her sleeping most of the day, or if not sleeping at least laying somewhere and not moving… Now that she’s almost three years old, there is no way that she is going to sit still to eat let alone give mommy a chance to finish writing an article or tweaking a newsletter for a client! Now that her schedule has changed, mine had to change as well.

She goes to  the baby sitter 2-3 times a week to give me some time to focus on my work and it’s amazing how much more work I get done in and on my business when I don’t have to worry about what she’d doing or why it’s so quiet upstairs!

I always eat lunch with her even on the days when she doesn’t want to eat anything. We sit at the table and play with her cars or read stories and I try to get her to eat at least a piece of turkey before she goes back to playing with her trains in the living room.

I plan my day out in the morning so that i don’t have any surprises during the day. I do still get urgent emails and have to tweak my schedule once in awhile but for the most part, even just having a plan of attack is super important to a happy Sara.

I shut down at 6.00pm EST everyday. I’ve talked about my worked schedule before but this is a really important one for me because it gives me enough time to get work done during the day but then gives me the time to put food together and spend some time together in the evenings before she has to go to bed.

I try to work with her now and make sure that she’s always the priority. She’s the reason I stayed home to work so what’s the point of working my butt off if I can’t play princess with her when she really needs me to?!

What’s your view of Budgeting?

• Have you ever done any budgeting; money and/or time?
• How did your system work out? Did you end up tweaking it along the way?
• If you are a WAHM, how do you manage your time to make sure you have a peaceful household and a booming business?

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Typical One year old
+
Working from home on client projects AND re-branding project
x
Not enough time in the day

= One crazy stressed out Mom/Wife/Woman!

Everyone has those days when things get overwhelming whether it’s your job, your family or the dog that won’t stop humping the neighbor and digging tunnels to China in your backyard (I love my dog, I love my dog…) If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Congratulation! I hate you. I award you no points and my god have mercy on your soul.

I started my business to help alleviate some stress in my life because riding a bus into the city everyday meant a 10 hour work day (if I worked overtime it was longer than that) and the childcare would have been redicutarded expensive. Now, I LOVE my job and am so happy I decided to stay home with my daughter and watch her grow up. I get to work with people I want to work with, work when I want to work and see Aerith with her funny little dances and giggles as she watches the dog chase his tail outside!

BUT

Now I have new stress that I hadn’t planned on. Watching Aerith is a full time job, being a good housekeeper is another full time job and running my virtual assistant business is a full time job. I hadn’t really considered the fact that I would have three full time jobs but here I am, and some days I want to quit and run away to distant shores and open a mom and pop porn shop!

SO

I have devised a new strategy to help me ease some of my stress and hopefully make me a happier person in general (which I’m sure everyone would enjoy). I started planning out my meals ahead of time, focusing on one area of the house at a time to clean and yesterday I signed up with a local babysitting service called BabySitEase to give me some ME time each week. This babysitting service is a big step because trusting someone else with my daughter might be the hardest thing I will ever do but I need to do this for my sanity and hers.

If you are getting overwhelmed by life and you are a planning kind of person like me I invite you to come along with me on my journey of organized chaos!

1. Write it down. Write down everything that is making you stressed out. Making dinner, cleaning your office, going through emails; whatever makes you want to run away screaming when someone reminds you that it has to be done.
2. Plan it out. Instead of waiting until the last minute to make dinner, plan out your week’s meals so you don’t have to come up with something off the top of your head. If social media is overwhelming, plan out times during the day that you check your accounts and/or schedule out your Tweets for the day, or the week, ahead of time to make sure you’re still involved.
3. Make time for yourself. Make sure to schedule in YOU time. YOU are the most import part of your business and your family because if you don’t work, it ain’t gonna work. Even if it’s just a weekly coffee break to a near by coffee shop or a Sunday bath/spa night, make sure you get a chance to decompress after all the hard work you do all week.

I’m going to try and tie in songs or movies with my blog posts from now on because I think it will be fun! SO, I shall leave you with this creepy version of “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads as performed by Kermit the Frog. (Yup, it’s just one of those things you need to see…)

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