How to Balance Parenthood and Entrepreneurship?
Consider this: both parenting and entrepreneurship are incredibly stressful endeavors characterized by irregular hours and often a lack of recognition for those involved.
Constantly managing difficult personalities can drain not only your energy but also your bank account. Moreover, everyone seems to have an opinion on why their approach is better and what you’re doing wrong.
Both roles demand relentless dedication and can be overwhelming at times. Therefore, it’s no wonder that combining the two might seem like an impossible task.
It often feels like you must choose one over the other—either you run a business or you raise a family, but having both seems unattainable.
However, this dichotomy doesn’t have to be your reality. There are countless successful entrepreneurs who also excel as devoted and loving parents.
While balancing both responsibilities can be challenging, it’s far from impossible. As we’ll explore further, this dual role is more common than you might think.
How to Balance Parenthood and Entrepreneurship?
1. Realize What You Can’t Influence
On a typical day, you might find yourself walking a fine line, striving to maintain equilibrium between family and professional duties. These challenges are magnified when unexpected events occur, such as a family member falling ill or a crisis arising at work.
A crucial lesson that applies to both parenting and entrepreneurship is the importance of handling setbacks gracefully.
Many entrepreneur-parents report experiencing intense stress, feeling as though they are failing in both arenas. This is often exacerbated by the mental tricks our minds play on us during difficult times.
By learning to navigate these challenges and accepting setbacks as part of the journey, you can better manage the complexities of balancing parenthood and entrepreneurship.
2. Look for Ways to Optimize Your Work Efforts
Chances are, you have many areas in which you spend more time than you otherwise should. Often small business moms can use artificial intelligence to create letters, generate replies or beautiful pictures for products.
Mom entrepreneurs can also use mobile faxing instead of a traditional fax. Obviously, online fax is faster, more convenient and cheaper. It’s simple: a fax app replaces a fax machine and even expands its functions in some places.
For example, it allows you to store documents and manage your archive directly on your smartphone, as well as print documents as needed.
3. Analyze Your Time and Look for Opportunities to Outsource Things
Evaluating how you spend your time might seem tedious, but it’s one of the most beneficial actions you can take for your business.
When feelings of imbalance and overwhelm arise, it’s often a sign that you’re overextended or concentrating too heavily on a single aspect of your professional or personal life.
Tools like Clockify can assist in measuring the time dedicated to each task, providing a clear picture of where your hours go. With this insight, you can identify tasks that can be handed over to someone else.
For instance, if you find yourself devoting ten hours a week to laundry and you dread every minute of it, outsourcing this chore could be a game-changer.
While I recognize that being able to hire help is a significant privilege, those who can afford to delegate tasks like housekeeping, laundry, or meal preparation may find themselves instantly enjoying a more balanced life.
4. Learn to Refuse
Many of us have set goals for both our professional and personal lives, and I adhere to a principle of declining anything that doesn’t align with those objectives.
I’ve turned down podcast interviews, collaborations, potential clients, and much more, all in the name of maintaining boundaries and balance.
Establishing clear boundaries—such as when you schedule calls, your work hours, and how you provide assistance in your business—can significantly contribute to achieving a more balanced lifestyle.
One of the most challenging aspects of managing a business as a parent is the ongoing screen time.
Whether your business operates on Instagram, Facebook, or another social media platform, it can feel impossible to escape the digital world and the incessant urge to respond instantly.
However, by turning off notifications, deleting apps over the weekend, and allocating specific times for social media use, you can create more space for yourself and your family.
5. Finding Support
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and the same principle applies to startups. A thriving business is rarely the product of a single individual’s efforts.
The reasoning is straightforward: handling everything alone is a monumental task, practically infeasible. This becomes even more evident when balancing entrepreneurship with parenthood.
Interestingly, one of the most challenging aspects for any entrepreneur is learning to let go of control. After building a startup from the ground up, delegating responsibilities to others can be quite daunting, despite its necessity.
Conclusion: Bonus Tip
Rest is crucial for maintaining balance. When we find ourselves completely exhausted and out of sync, it’s often because we haven’t been prioritizing our health and rest. Before making drastic changes to your life, take a moment to pause and reflect.
Your business can be put on hold, but your health and well-being should not be neglected. During your time off, you will be able to set goals, optimize your efforts, and set boundaries between parenting and business responsibilities.
