Imagine this:

You get up in the morning, shower, and have a leisurely breakfast with your family. Your kids settle down to school work (or head off to school), and you and your spouse go to work – in your home office. You each have your own tasks to accomplish, and frequently share information across the room. Sometimes your spouse pauses to flirt with you.

Lunch means stopping long enough to fix whatever you want to eat, and enjoying it with your spouse or your entire family (if you are fortunate enough to homeschool). Then it is back to work until just before dinnertime. The kids help with the family business with age appropriate tasks in the afternoon, and are given payment for their help.
Everyone pitches in to fix dinner, and then to cleanup afterward. The kids settle down to read or watch a movie, and you and your spouse go for an evening walk around town. You stop occasionally to greet neighbors who are outside in the dimming light. It gets dark when you are still several blocks from home, but you don’t worry about your safety. It is just nice being with the love of your life.

Ever had a day like that? Small town America, self-employment, working in harmony with your spouse, working in a family business where the whole family works together, being able to walk around town and know who your neighbors are, and feeling safe walking after dark.

This is my life. Every day is not idyllic.. far from it. We have to drive an hour to get anywhere, the kids squabble and have to be taught not to, just like any kids. But I live a life that most people think they dream of. They do not see the other side of it – the sacrifices we make to keep this life. The house we live in that isn’t all that great, the older cars we drive so we can afford to live where the distances eat cars and spit out the pieces, or the times we bite our tongues to keep the peace in our home.

There is no pool, there is no expensive car. There are no vacations to exotic places – the Platte River or the Guernsey Wagon Ruts are as exotic as it gets. But we don’t need those things to be happy. The real happiness comes from our relationships in our family.

Life is good. And getting better.

I can’t hardly tell you what I’ve accomplished this week. It seems like one of those weeks where I’ve been running around trying to catch up, but never seem to get anything DONE!

Had to be out all day Monday, spent Tuesday catching up on those mundane little things that leave you no evidence of anything accomplished. Wednesday I started a file upload, but due to our flaky internet, it did not finish – Kevin was sick that day, so he didn’t get anything much done either. My daughter sliced her thumb open and required 5 stitches and a tetanus shot (so we got the other kids updated on their immunizations while we were at it). Thursday the same daughter had to see the cardiologist, which took half the day, the other half of which was spent trying to finish the download, which involved finding another FTP client. Today, the day is rapidly being eaten up with piddly little things that seem to have no bearing on the work that is behind!

We have days like this. Sometimes we have WEEKS like this. Where the work on the list just sits there, the income that is needed doesn’t come, and we feel like our business is just stalled. And it seems that family needs come into the picture – not as an irritation, but just as a factor that doesn’t seem to make us feel any better.

When someone gets sick,  or when things come up that take us way from work, it is hard to get back on track sometimes. And the family stuff that gets in the way is something we rarely give ourselves credit for having accomplished. Maybe because it doesn’t PAY us!

In between this all though, I did get some things done that aren’t going to help much immediately, but which will pay off long term – I created three MicroBusiness Tree in the Rock sculptures (http://westernhillsinstitute.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=47)
and posted them for sale on our Institute site. I updated several course listings, and completed the instructional writing for 5 booklets. And I created a booklet brochure for the Institute, which we can use to mail out to various businesses. There were various conversations with clients, and completion of a header and several site assessments, as well as no less than FOUR “What do I do?” inquiries (the ones where people want to know how to find a good business for themselves).

All things considered, I had a busy week, and a productive one. But most of this stuff won’t pay me right now – most of it is that kind of stuff that you have to do if you want the business to grow, but which you don’t see results from right away.

Part of the reason I am writing this is to outline what I’ve done in a way that helps ME realize all that I’ve accomplished. Sometimes we don’t realize how much it is until we try to describe it.

So the next time you feel frustrated at not being able to get anything done, write down what you DID do. It just might astonish you!

I’ve known for a long time that when you are making changes, that the second week is the hardest – right toward the end of it, things get very difficult to maintain. Everyone starts resisting to the fullest. What I never expect, is how much I, myself, contribute to that.

Kevin has been home for just two weeks. And yesterday was pretty hard. We were crabbing at each other instead of working together, and it was pretty terrible. It was not until late in the day that I realized why. We are both making some huge adjustments, and this is just the time frame in which those adjustments are the hardest.

I think during the day yesterday I was ready to just throw in the towel and figure it wasn’t ever going to work if it was going to be like this. And according to everything I know about human behavior, that is precisely what most people think at the end of two weeks of attempting new changes!

Once it finally dawned on me that this was just part of a process, and that we needed to redouble and get through it, I figured I can last another week – end of the third week is when things usually start to finally come together into a new functioning pattern if you persevere. So I am going to watch and see how it all comes out then.

Because having a spouse come home to work the family business together is no small set of changes. It is HUGE, and it means that we have to insure that our relationship develops on new fronts, and that we develop new skills.

Kevin is still in the “it’s your business” mode, instead of the “it’s MY business” mindset, but hopefully that will change over the next couple weeks too.

It will be a busy week though – we have a kitchen remodel to finish in a client rental, some more work to finish in our own rental, a business fair to attend, and a lot of client and personal web work to do. There just is not enough of me to do it all, and Kevin and David cannot help with some of what needs to be done. I’m sure we will muddle through though.

I’ve always had simple business goals. I wanted to keep my family first, keep my business small, and NOT to have to handle the paperwork associated with employees. I wanted my business to stay flexible, so that I had some freedom over what I chose to do, and that was always more important to me than making lots of money. Financially, my goal was that my business justify the time I put in on it, and that it benefit our family. It certainly has done that, though many people would wonder why I was not driven to make more.

Last summer, my goals changed. I prayerfully thought about what I could accomplish, and how I could take the dreams of my heart, and by compromising some things, create something that would provide a greater realization of other dreams. Specifically, if I earned more, I’d be able to do more good. To do that though, I would have to compromise some of my preferences. It took a careful reassessment of what I COULD compromise, and what I could not.

I’d have to hire employees.

My family would STILL have to be my priority. That meant I’d have to delegate many tasks I prefer to do myself, to keep MY job flexible.

I’d have to move from technician, to trainer and administrator.

I’d have to market in a way I had never done before, and become comfortable in situations I had previously tried to avoid.

We’d have to incorporate. Somewhere I never wanted to go, but financially, it made the most sense (no, and LLC would NOT do for our particular situation).

I had to change my concept of what I was capable of achieving. That was a big step. I’ve always lived in a small town, and done small things. Suddenly I was faced with stepping outside that comfort zone and considering competing with people who were thinking big.

I had to seriously rethink my pricing, productivity, and target market. I also had to think about ways to set up systems to make our services more efficient.

For it to work, I had to determine which of my personal preferences I could give up, and which ones I could not. And I had to think and plan for potentials that I was not at all certain we could ever realize.

Did I want to franchise? No. So how would I expand my efforts if I did not want to do that?
Did I want to hire employees? Not really, but I could make that change – after all, I also liked the idea of providing employment in a depressed area.

Did I want an office outside the house? Absolutely not. But I’d have to have one… so I thought about how I could do that and still feel like I could keep in touch with my home throughout the day – we happen to own a property just across the alley, and that provided the answer. I can still work from home, set up the office on the other property, and interlink the phone systems between the offices.

I also looked hard at my strengths and weaknesses. I am a good designer – not extraordinary, nothing amazing, but functionally good. But that was something I could delegate (did, in fact, to my son). I could delegate marketing tasks (if I could find someone willing to actually DO them!), and I could delegate financial tasks – but ONLY to someone I really trusted (that ended up being my husband). I could delegate some writing tasks, but not all, and I could delegate many technical tasks, but not unless I had someone qualified, or someone whom I had trained (due to financial issues, that one is still a ways out). I could NOT delegate client negotiations. I am simply the best person for that. And I could not delegate project oversight – the buck stops with me. I also refuse to delegate childcare, except sometimes having the older kids watch the younger ones. I am simply NOT willing to give up motherhood to someone else. I’d have to supervise, and administrate on a flexible schedule, and delegate things that were not flexible, so that I could keep motherhood as my priority. I’d have to make sure my business offerings always made that possible (one reason we phased out computer repair services – not flexible enough).

I have a friend now who is looking at some of the same issues. Do I want to grow, HOW do I want to grow, and what can I give up to make that happen, and what do I, personally, have to retain, to keep my personal goals as they need to be?

It has truly been a learning process. We began the effort to seriously grow, about 6 months ago. I had to combine that effort with training my husband and son in their duties, so it has been slow. But this month I realized one of my goals – people are now starting to call ME, instead of us having to chase down every contract. Growth is still slow, but it is happening, and the income trend is steadily rising. Some projects we put into place 6 months ago are also now just starting to pay off, in a significant way, and that is pretty cool.

Everything I choose to do with my business has to fit my long term goals. If it does not fit, I adapt it, or I let it go. I’ve had many opportunities for growth come during the last 6 months, and most of them I passed on. Because growth is only good if it is the kind of growth that you can cope with. What I am ending up with, is a unique and needed service, that fits my lifestyle well, and that works for my clients and employees too.

And I am definitely still learning about growth!