Periodically, I realize I’ve taken on too much. Then I go through a phase of decluttering where I reassess my priorities and reorganize the demands on my time. It usually takes about six months before I’m back where I started because the natural result of decluttering is to see lots of empty space just waiting to be filled – and work just seems to fill it easier than timewasters do.

Is that a bad thing? Some would think so. I’m not so sure it is. Yeah, it isn’t nice to feel harried. But when I’m juggling a lot of things, I get more done. Really. I am at my best when sprinting. And those extra things I take on temporarily sure teach me a lot. They broaden my experience in ways that give value back to my clients.

We listened to a presentation by a bootstrap expert a few months ago. He said that to be successful, a bootstrap business pretty much had to run understaffed. Everybody had to meet their potential and then some, and there was no room for overstaffing, for anybody to have to fill time. We find that this is true. We have to juggle work, and we all have to stay busy. If we don’t, then we run into a deficit really fast, because payroll ends up being the largest single expense for a small startup.

It is often very hard to balance all the business needs – marketing and networking, client work, product prep for the future, presentations and teaching, development of our own sites, development of client resources, etc. Client work of course is the most important, but those other things have to be done also, or the business runs into a wall later.

I’ve come to understand that for me, I’ll probably always wash in and out like the tide between too busy, and not busy enough. And I’ve come to understand that it isn’t bad – it allows me to experience many things I’d not experience otherwise, and it helps me to learn how to prioritize when necessary.

There are two kinds of people in this world:

• Those who look at the past, and understand that if a road has always lead to a specific destination in the past, that it is likely to lead there again, and again, and again.
• Those who look at the past, and assume that because of their personal charm, unrealistic desires, or ignorance of the facts, that the road will lead somewhere else for them than it did for someone else.

Now, I’m not talking about creativity, doing it different, or taking a failed idea and changing something to make it different.

I’m talking about historic, social, moral, political, familial, and business patterns that form rules within which we must work. And if we step outside those rules, there WILL be consequences just as there have been for every other person, society, or group, which tried it.

It is like looking at a Map of the US, and heading North to get to Mexico. You won’t get to Mexico, you will get to Canada. To assume that just by “believing”, or sheer bull headedness that you can get to Mexico by heading North, is purely illogical unless you want to circle the globe. And that, my friend, is taking the long way, and is more likely to end in failure, and CERTAIN to involve unnecessary pain and hardship.

There is all kinds of flexibility for individuality within the rules, but if you want to reach a certain destination, you do not head off blindly or contrarily in the opposite direction. If a certain road has always lead to a certain destination, the wise study it out, and follow the road that goes there. The foolish wander off in other directions, scratching their heads, wondering what went wrong.

The real problem is figuring out what the rules really are – where the map really is pointing. There is a lot of conflicting information on all subjects in this day and age. Which is the real map? Which guide is telling the truth about their experience? Because it takes a lot more than believing to get somewhere. You have to believe in something that is actually true, and you have to act in a way that carries out the required steps to achieve what you want to achieve, whether it is a monetary goal, a spiritual goal, or a personal goal.

I bought a new laptop in November of last year. Used to Dells, the HP was not quite up to speed – in more ways than one.

Within 6 months, the trackpad had a hole worn in the surface, apparently built more to be a toy than a heavily used tool. It did have a nice feature or two, as well as some things which bugged me regularly, like the CD drive that was on the right side, which required that I move the Wacom tablet every time I inserted or removed a disk. A real issue when burning stacks of CDs for an event.

The computer was woefully under supplied in the resource department also. It wasted my time every day in ways I could count, and for which there was a very real cost. So we reluctantly concluded that another laptop was in order, and back to Dell we went.

The new one arrived today. A nice slot loading CD drive, discouragingly located on the right side! But at least they did not locate the earphone plugs in the region of my navel like the HP had – made recording instructional videos a bit painful! The HP did have two charming features which I was loath to part with, so I ordered them on the new one as well – the built-in webcam (easier to cut in bits for training videos), and the twin hard drives. I also ordered a new frill – the fingerprint scan lock. We shall see how THAT works out, but we do feel a need for more security given the amount of confidential information that a website designer is required to store on a computer.

I also ordered a copy of PC Mover, with the hopes that it will speed the transfer of all my STUFF between computers, and shorten the setup time. It is two hours into the massive data transfer via USB cable, and tells me it has 6 hours to go. Of course, 3 hours ago it told me it had 14 hours to go, so we can hope that it will be done before bed time tonight.

In our business, we do end up having to replace laptops about once a year, or every two years at the outset. It is our corporate policy to use laptops instead of desktops to encourage mobility. The one time killer is the switch over to the new one. Usually it takes days to finally let go of the old one. I’m typing this on the new one while the transfer goes on in the background – they discourage this kind of behavior, but I cannot do NOTHING while two computers just talk to each other. I have too much to do, including blog posts for four blogs.

So I am killing time, doing the only things I can do while it moves my files – Catching up on the writing.

The opportunity was a good one. It would mean a lot of business coming our way. There was only one problem with it. I couldn’t do it.

Just three weeks before I had been railing at the cruelty of prospective clients who cannot see our potential to be more than what our average client wants – they look at our average sites, and assume we cannot do anything but average, when in fact, we can. We do a lot of $500 websites. A $500 website is not the same thing as a $1500 website, or a $4000 website, though we can do those too. I can say with a fair amount of certainty that we cannot do a $10,000 website (except in certain circumstances). Certainly, something within that scope would require that we do something that we are not qualified to do.

The opportunity was potentially in the $10,000 category (not price-wise… more like expectation-wise). A lot of potential $10,000 opportunities. To which I had to say, “I don’t think I can do this.” That made me want to cry.

It has to do with expectations. I can build a $10,000 website. In fact, I can build a better website for $10,000 than what many designers can build for $15,000. But someone who pays $10,000 for a website generally wants something different than someone who pays $500 for a website. Oh, there are clients who NEED a $10,000 website that is exactly what I usually build, only with more function. We aren’t talking about them. We are talking about the ones who need that extra value in just a few specific areas – either high end graphics, optimized to the teeth, or high security (comparatively). Those are things I cannot do. I can do all of those things up to about a 5 on the scale of 1-10. Most of our clients only need a 2.

But our clients expect to live in the realm of compromise. LOTS of compromise. They need it to WORK, but they know that if the positioning of that tiny thing, or the name of the item on that form, or the appearance of the admin area of the site isn’t appealing to them, that they can live with it. That the site is going to work anyway. They are content with the 10% of everything that gets them 90% of the results because they know that is what they can afford, it is what they need, and they are getting higher value than they can get anywhere else.

Expectations for higher end clients are different. They want those tiny details attended to, even if those tiny details are just preference issues, even if those tiny details don’t affect customer conversions, and even if those tiny details cost more to fix. They want perfection. They pay for the right to expect it. They REQUIRE it in some areas that I don’t have the training to be able to deliver.

If I did decide to learn to do those jobs, I’d lose my ability to deliver what I specialize in now. I don’t want to get out of that box. Oh, I do want to push the envelope sometimes – to get a client now and again that isn’t having to pinch every penny so tightly that it leaves a dent. Not a lot, just one or two here and there. Just a little dessert with the bread and butter.

So I told them my limits, even though it almost hurt to tell them that. I told them that they’d probably be better off with someone who could do it all for them, and how it would probably work best. Within minutes, the reply came – at least the first opportunity was within our skillset. They wanted us on the job.

I don’t have to cry this time. I may cry in a few weeks when the first big challenge hits, but today, I’m singing, because an impossibility became an opportunity that I’d been asking for.

There are few startup owners that I can really speak openly to, about the best way to choose a home business option, because I am not certain of whether they will accept a religious take on it. But this is my first advice, to anyone who is open to receiving it:

Look around you, and find a need for something that you know the Lord will approve of. Ask Him to help you find the need that He wants you to fill. Business is always about meeting needs when it is done right, and when you go about meeting the needs that the Lord desires for you to meet, it takes care of YOU, too. If you ask that, then you don’t need to choose based on feasibility or earnings potential, or skills, or anything else. You choose based on what He inspires you to choose. THEN you go back and ask Him how to make it feasible, how to develop a revenue generation plan that works, how to hone your skills to do it, etc. He can move mountains, He can also help us get the right thing, and then help us work out the necessary practical details to make it work.

I can’t tell you if you should start a business. But I do know that if the Lord desires for you to do something, it is His wisdom that you do it, even if it looks like you don’t need it. I felt inspired to seriously build our business just six months before Kevin (husband) was laid off. Anyone looking at us from the outside would have said that for Kevin to go into this business was absurd, and that it would never work. But I knew it was inspired, so we did it. Only now is the wisdom of that inspiration coming to light – as Kevin is finally able to pull out skills that he did not know he had, and that he has fought for so long.

I chose based on my existing talents, which pointed me in a direction that helps other people. See, it isn’t about marketing a business. I didn’t look around and say, “Oh gee, the world needs another web designer!”.  It is about helping a business owner succeed so they can care for their family. In this day, when it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive, and to afford to care for children, my purpose is to enable families to live. THAT is the purpose of helping businesses. I chose web design because it looked like there was a need for one that specialized in helping people in the low end, by offering more affordable options within a specialization that did not exist until we created it. We help them succeed in their business, but we also help keep them from being cheated, and my business allows me to learn how to teach others to spot scams, and to teach ethics and honesty in my profession. Those are all things the Lord approves of. It isn’t about web design. Web design is a skill, which allows me to help others.

Where is the hole in the lives of people around you, that is not being met by existing businesses?

You may not be able to answer that for some time, you may need some additional business exposure first. But if you are inspired to follow this kind of course, a thought will begin growing, and you’ll put the pieces of reason together into something that fills a great need, and that reaches beyond just a goal of learning and earning.

I know that when you seek not just a business, but a means of serving the Lord IN the business, a miracle happens, and a niche forms, and a wondrous thing comes of it.

Ok, so its Tuesday. Monday is generally a mire of weekend catch up. Most clients discover problems, or think to contact us about the next step, or want the report for the week before, on Monday. And that is when any procrastination from the week before catches up with us too!

I rarely get everything done that I plan on Mondays. Blogging gets shoved aside if I have not blogged ahead. That is why I am writing about the Monday Mire, on Tuesday!

I recently discovered a great task manager, which is perfect for MicroBusinesses, and this Monday was a little better organized due to that task manager. But it was still a bit hectic – I added a lot of new tasks!

I can deal with Mondays being hectic, as long as I have my Sundays. The worst weeks are those in which emergencies occur on Sundays. I then hit Mondays half-charged. No fun! God was pretty smart when He commanded us to take a day of rest – though I find it ironic that He had to COMMAND us to do something so helpful!

Monday is past for this week, and tomorrow, I’m sure, will be Friday, and I’ll wonder where Wednesday and Thursday went!

You can get a great idea for something outside the box, and then find yourself locked inside it because other people simply cannot think outside their own expectations enough to understand that you provide something that is better than what they expect.

We developed a trade association. We wanted to operated it on totally new rules, with offerings in it that are completely unique. We found that as we set out to do that, the biggest obstacle we encountered was the expectation people had. They simply would not operate in a way outside the shabby and substandard way they’d expected such associations to operate online. You could explain, and it was like they did not even hear the words, because they filtered them through the fog of their own familiarity  and watered them so far down that they had no meaning by the time they were done.

We’ve found that with several businesses. If you are innovative, it doesn’t necessarily help, if other people are not. Sometimes the world may not be ready for your great idea, and you’ll have to conform to what they are ready for.

It can be very discouraging, because it limits progress for everybody when they require you to become like the others before they’ll accept what you offer, even when what you offer is markedly superior.

Sometimes you have to implement great ideas in stages instead of all at once. People cannot accept things that are too far from their realm of familiarity, and sometimes their expectations get in the way of your ability to exceed them.

If my kid works for you, I hope you won’t be too easy on them. Not because I am a cruel mom, to the contrary. I am a mom that wants her kids to know how to work well enough to be WORTH hiring.

When you are hiring my kid to work for you, you are not just being nice to a kid and paying them so they’ll have some money. You are training a worker. If you do not expect them to get the job right, then they won’t learn to get it right. I’d like you to be firm with them, and expect high, but reasonable performance from them.

I do not appreciate people who take advantage of my kids, like the woman who had them shovel the snow off a very large deck and driveway, and paid them $2. But I don’t want you to pay them when they didn’t do the job correctly either. I want them to understand that I am not the only person who expects them to do their best.

I want you to help me teach them the concept of value given for value received. I want you to help me encourage them to feel good about hard work done well. I want them to understand that an employer expects certain things of them, and that the employer has every right to expect it!

If you are too easy on them, you won’t want to have them come back and work again. So letting them go, and paying them, when the job isn’t done, is not kind to them at all. Instead, it guarantees that you won’t want to hire them again, and that they won’t have the chance to earn from you again.

If you teach them what you expect, and encourage them to get it right, and pay them fairly when it is done, then you’ll want to invite them back again. And they’ll want to come. It will help you both.

I teach them as well as I can. But unless other people reinforce what I am teaching them, they won’t listen to me for very long! If my kid works for you, I hope you’ll help me teach them to work well, and to be a good employee.

When our apple trees burst into bloom this year, the sight was so lovely I begged Kevin to go get pictures. He obliged, and I made them into greeting cards.

A blossom is a promise of fruit. But it takes a lot of work to get a blossom, and then more work to get fruit. And a lot of time and unexpected happenings can occur in between.

When you plant a tree, you expect to have to nourish it and protect it and care for it for a couple of years, just to get it to show blossoms. And then they are few. Often the first ones do not result in fruit. Maybe the next ones do though.

The blossoms appear, and they look lovely. We always get exited when we see them, because they mean spring is here, and summer is on its way. Summer always seems easier to handle than winter!

But then the blossoms wither, fall off, and sit there looking ugly for weeks, until you can finally see that fruit IS going to develop.

The first sign of fruit is small, green, unappetizing things, unfit for consumption. They take more care to get them to the point where they are even edible, and even more to get to the point where you’d want to share them, or enjoy them!

How like that our business is. So much work just to see an indication that it will work, and more work while things look ugly and we forget the promise of the blossom.

Even after a harvest, we may have times when the business dies back – and we wonder if we’ll see blossoms again next season. The same sense of excitement comes when the blossoms finally do appear.

Biblically, the Lord uses the alegories of planting, tending, and harvesting to teach. They still apply.