It’s been a while since I did one of these because I’ve been a busy parentrepreneur!
So, what’s been happening?
Well, for the first two months of our children’s lives, I didn’t work at all. The super team at OnlyExcel meant I was able to step back from the business and make the most of those early months when most needed. For the following four months, I worked 8-12 hours a week.
If you’ve ever worked in an agency, you’ll know you can reliably see about three months ahead. As you can imagine, if your main sales guy takes six months out of the business, things start to slow down a bit, and for us, new business certainly did.
Thankfully, we have been around for a while and plenty of existing clients asked us for work, which kept us going.
Then, diving back into the team on a four-day week (and working with excellent sales, advertising and marketing freelancers) we got the business pipeline filled up once again, and we took on some fab new clients.
So, what have I learned?
First and foremost, my wife and kids are awesome. This I already knew, but it has been deeply reinforced! You can actually see the family in this rather cool BBC / Brand Scotland file in which I have a small cameo:
The cliché is true: Your priorities do shift when you become a parent. And it’s true for a reason. When things that might have seemed unthinkable before (like stepping away for six months) become essential, you start getting resourceful and you find ways to make it work.
The business had its best year ever despite my absence and a year on, it continues to grow from strength to strength.
Sometimes, we have self-limiting beliefs and little rules that get in the way of real change and progress.
For example, I didn’t think I could take more time off work, but I needed some. So we increased daycare days, and I switched to a nine-day working fortnight, creating some much-needed “me-time” for both me and my wife. Or, I guess, “us-time”. (No, not that.)
I also didn’t feel like I had enough personal time in the morning. And realised I don’t need to start work at 9 AM. So now start at 9:30. The extra half hour off more than makes up for it in wellbeing and productivity.
Simple is better when it comes to a schedule
It’s easier to remember where things should get done, and much easier to arrange things with people. My day is split into morning and afternoon. Morning is sales, client calls and business admin. Afternoons (and every second Friday) are project work. Finally, I have some slots each morning and afternoon to do the inevitable ‘unplanned’ work.
Turning the advice we give clients inwards has been invaluable. To “eliminate, automate and delegate” tasks.
- We’ve rebuilt our internal CRM and project management system to better fit our processes
- We’ve improved the way clients can book calls with us
- We’re working on new service offerings to make it easier to do business with us
- We’ve been working on the way we communicate, with more outside help
And what’s next?
I now feel like I have more time and headspace to deliver regular blog articles with handy tips, thoughts and strategies to help you thrive in business and in life. Watch this space
Previous Parentrepreneur blogs:
01: Balancing parenthood with business
02: Twins, things and wins
