How can I justify taking the time to do this when it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere?

Since I speak to a large number of writers I often get the question, “How do you find the time to write?”

This question isn’t unique to writers. Many business owners have similar questions:

• How can I justify spending more money on a company that isn’t growing?
• I am making almost nothing, how can I invest more marketing dollars?
• I work from home and all my friends think they can drop in any time, so I never get work done.
• Since people know I work from home they always ask me to volunteer and get mad when I don’t.      

Do you see yourself in any of these? If you don’t, you have a great set of boundaries and clear goals. If you struggle with these issues, here are a few things to consider.

1. You need to set a goal with benchmarks and a deadline.  The worst thing you can do is “try” a business. You need to decide WHAT your strategy is, HOW you’re going to execute your business plan and the DEFINITION of success. Then you need to modify that periodically. If you don’t, you’ll find that your productive hours become less and less until you “realize” that you’re just not good at business. You may be GREAT at business, just bad at self-discipline. Create a clear goal and pursue it with all you have. If you’re going to fail, fail with all of your energy spent, not with a Starbucks in your hand and FaceBook on your “office” computer screen.
2. RECOGNIZE that marketing is key to success, but most marketing is not done with billboards and business cards. It is building relationships and following through on promises. Your REPUTATION will build your wallet faster than any marketing campaign.
3. ESTABLISH boundaries. This is why I have an office and a house, but not a home office. For 5 years I needed a home office because I had no money, but since then I’ve realized the value of separating the home/work life. I still work from home when necessary [or on REALLY snowy Michigan days], but I like to give my family my time when I’m home and my clients my time when I’m at work. I have stopped giving clients family time and family work time. And I’m MUCH happier and productive because of it.
4. ACCEPT not everyone will be happy with you and learn to be okay with that. Just because I own the company doesn’t mean I can leave whenever I want.  Sometimes that means my kids can’t go to the zoo when they want. It also means that despite giving everything I have and more, sacrificing sleep and family time, sometimes a client just won’t be satisfied with me, my work or my company. As a Straight A student and MAJOR type-A personality, even typing this nearly brings me to tears. But it is a fact. I will put everything I have in to my work and my clients get FAR more hours out of me then they ever see [or many times are even billed for]. Most of them are not grateful for the extra work because I don’t even mention it to them. Even with that, at the end of the day my pride must come from knowing I did the best within my human ability for that person and not take it personal if they weren’t satisfied. It is nothing wrong with me or with them.
5. CONTINUE TO LEARN. I have found that when I stop reading what others are doing my profits suffer. That is because we all get stale and stuck in our ruts. We never arrive. If doctors need continuing education to find out new things about the human body [something which is basically the same], then we all need to keep learning about new ideas and things that help our business [something that continually changes].

I’ll soon be offering deeper teachings and resources on these topics. If you’d like to know more about them when they become available make sure that you are getting these blogs delivered to you and that you have my newsletter.

And we do writing, editing, coaching, project management, marketing and consulting on topics as diverse as speculative fiction to memoirs to Bible studies and business development books. Use our contact page to find out more.

Thanks for taking the time to visit us today. Now go and apply one new thing. I’ll see you next week.

Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter, The Writing Career Coach

Don’t miss a single posting! Subscribe here to receive these postings by e-mail. Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at writingcareercoach.com.

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