How I Balance Working Full Time and Being a Creative Entrepreneur
For 7 years, I worked either from 3-10, or from 9-4 as an event planner for a restaurant. Between those hours, and on my days off, I was working building my own brand, launching this blog and investing my time and money into other entrepreneurial ventures. I’ve never truly known what it is that I wanted to do, but I’ve always known exactly what I didn’t what to do. When I learned about social selling, the idea of leveraging my time and my income was exciting to me. I immediately caught the vision of one day working for myself full time, speaking on stages and panels (even though those things scared me to death) I knew it was something I’d be doing for the rest of my life. In the meantime, I had to figure out a way to balance my full time career and the millions of thoughts that run through my head each day regarding my business, the projects I want to finish and the future business plans I want to start.
I SEE A CERTAIN LIFE FOR MYSELF
& I WONT STOP UNTIL I GET IT
These days, from 7:30am-4:00pm, I’m busy planning corporate and social events for Hilton. From 4:00pm to 9pm, you can find me empowering women to live their best lives physically, mentally and spiritually. I believe my life’s purpose is teach others how to let their soul glow. I feel this pull so strongly, that I know it’s what I’m meant to do long term. In order to make those dreams a reality, working when I’m not working is non negotiable. Let me break it down for you:
There is no such thing as multitasking. People claim to be phenomenal multi taskers, but they’re really only doing ONE thing at a time. One of my mentors told me a long time ago to work on my full time work while I’m at work, and work on my dream/creative ventures when I’m not at work. This freed up so much anxiety I had about trying to get it all done. If you’re looking to balance your full time job and your side hustle, or your new creative venture, you have to create time blocks for each one. While you’re at work, focus on work. Give it your all. Become the best employee by showing up on time. Step into your power as a leader and give those 7-8 hours your full attention. As soon as it’s time to go, you shift shape into a new character.
I joke on my social media that often I feel as though I’m living a double life. I work at the corporate level in hospitality by day, and I’m a certified business owner by night. By separating the two, I’ve been able to create boundaries so that I can give each job my undivided attention. At 4:00pm, Liv goes LIVE and immediately starts to shift into content creation mode, brand strategy mode and selling mode. I leave work at work and really dive into my passion.
If we’re not careful, we will mix the two and begin to burn out. Sometimes there is no such thing as ‘balance’ and I’m dog tired from staring at three monitors all day planning events, crunching numbers to stay within budgets and talking to clients about what time they want their breaks. When that happens, I allow myself the grace when I have no energy to show up for my own business, I listen to my body, and I rest. The next weekend, you can believe I will be playing catch up.
Instead of trying to do everything, only tackle 3 things each day to accomplish. I’m a serial list maker. I love writing things down, and being able to cross them off my list as I complete each task. What I’ve noticed is that when I write too many things down, I end up not being able to complete the full list. So I will write out one long list the night before. Then that next morning, I will write down the 3 most important/biggest things to accomplish and tackle those for the day.
Jim Rohn says “Work hard at your job and you can make a living. Work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune”… “I’m working full time on my job. And part time on my fortune, because profits lead to fortune.”
YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR TO DO LIST
You will have thoughts, ideas and moments of inspiration that will come in the middle of your work day. Write them down in your notes section, and save them for later. Use Sunday’s to plan your content for the week. Use Monday’s for ‘Money Monday’s and reach out to people, network and find ways to generate more money. Tuesday-Thursday, you’re doing income producing activities. If you’re social selling, you’re reaching out, following up, communicating with your team, creating content. Fridays are for follow ups. I call them follow up friday’s.
Embrace the journey. Understand that you’re doing big things for not only working a full time job, but by showing up after long days of work to continue to work on your fortune. Remember to take at least 1 day of rest, and give yourself grace on the days, weeks or even months where you don’t get it all done.
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How to Succeed in the Workplace and Entrepreneurship as an Introvert