More Than 50% of Work Time is Spent Doing "Other Stuff"

Posted by Debbie Dragon on November 21, 2007

While there are a few different ways to earn money from home, this blog is primarily focused on people who want to start their own businesses- maybe you hope to become a freelance writer, virtual administrative assistant, bookkeeper- the idea is that you are going solo and working for yourself rather than for someone else.

Owning your own business means you’re doing so much more than your actual business “activity”. For me, that’s mainly writing. When I became a full time writer, I thought I’d spend my days writing and writing and loving every second of it! Making money doing something I love! It’s the dream life.

I wasn’t thinking about everything else, like keeping track of stuff for taxes, how to set my prices, how I would ensure I always had enough incoming business…. Oh and I had absolutely no idea how long the quoting/invoicing/working/reviewing/revision process would take for every project – which means cash flow can be a problem because I often don’t get paid until the clients have had opportunity to look over the FINAL completed work, which can be anywhere from a few days to a couple months after the project begins!

Being in business for yourself means you’ll do your business activity about 50% of the time. The other 50% of your work time is marketing and administrative work. Maybe that doesn’t shock you, but I remember when I finally came to that realization…. and how it meant it was time to bring in some helpers!

This post is not meant to scare you off- only to make sure you have a realistic view of what going into business for yourself means. And let’s not forget- if you’re a mom, you’re already putting in more hours than anybody else raising the kids- so you really need to love what you do in order to go into business for yourself.