What is it like to be a multi-passionate female entrepreneur? I’m here to tell you. As someone who has been in the game for over 10 years, running multiple businesses, I’ve learned that there’s no one size fits all approach when it comes to entrepreneurship. You have to find what works best for you and your lifestyle – which can feel overwhelming at times. But don’t worry! The purpose of this post is to share with you how my day unfolds as an entrepreneur with multiple passions, so hopefully by the end of this article you will know if being a multifaceted entrepreneur sounds right for you or not.

To say that I run multiple companies is an understatement. I’m a writer, an online course creator, a network marketer for amazing wellness products, a blogger, and I provide coaching services that help fellow female entrepreneurs learn how to recognize and move past mindset blocks, programming, and self-sabotaging behaviors so they can cultivate the lives and businesses their souls have been craving. 

As a mom of two who works from home, it’s taken time for me to figure out what works for me and my family when it comes to work-life balance. Obviously there’s no one-size fits all solution and you’ll have to try some things out to see what works for you and your family.

So, how does the day unfold for a multi-passionate female entrepreneur?

One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is that you can start your day at whatever time works for you, so long as there’s no overlap with any meetings or classes (or young kids and their personal agendas), I try to wake up before my kids so I can have some personal space (and quiet). These days they tend to wake up pretty early so 6am seems to be my sweet spot.

My goal in the mornings is to set my day up for success so that I can stay high energy, focused, have more patience with myself and others, and be more likely to take in stride any hiccups or little emergencies that may come my way. How do I do that?

Each morning during my morning routine (insert link to Morning Routine post) I move my body, work on my mindset, do some personal development, and I write out a few things that I want to get done that day. If I don’t allow myself this time to have this routine, I find that my emotional health suffers, I get stressed about the small stuff, and I have low energy and poor focus (all the things that I’ve learned over the years are a recipe for failure). I don’t know about you but I prefer to feel happy, stress-free, productive, and successful. Don’t you?

You may have noticed that I have yet to mention checking email or notifications. The reason for this is that I’ve found that if I do that first thing in the morning, I get distracted by work, get derailed from my morning routine, and my day goes down the tubes.

So what do I do after my morning routine?

I spend my time with my kids. I make them breakfast and get them ready for school. We all eat breakfast together at the dining room table and we enjoy our time together. I don’t rush through this process because my kids will only be this little for so long and one day (hopefully not too soon) they’ll prefer their friends over me. I was a teenager once too. I know how these things go.

I know how lucky I am to be able to take this time with my family. I am grateful for this every single day of my life. I know you may still have a full time job you have to go to and you have to rush through your morning to get to it. I was the kid who had a mom rushing through breakfast and school drop off to make it to work in time. For all of you working moms out there who are moonlighting to grow a business, I say keep going momma! Remain consistent with your efforts and one day soon you’ll be the one taking your time in the morning with your kids.

So when do I actually begin working on my businesses?

To answer this question gets a little complicated and goes all the way to my childhood. As a latchkey kid of the 1980’s who found herself home alone after school with her siblings far too often, I decided to leave my full-time career to be a work-from-home entrepreneur way before having kids of my own. 

It’s very important to me that I can be 100% present with my kids when they’re home and awake so Rule #1 for me is that I don’t use that time for work. When I actually get to sit down to work depends on the day of the week.  

After my daughter is dropped off at school, if my son is napping, I can sit down to work (or take a shower). He usually naps for about 2 hours but the window during which he naps varies so it’s impossible for me to schedule any meetings with other people – coaching clients, business partners, prospective customers or otherwise – because there’s nothing more distracting and stressful than a screaming baby.

How to get creative with childcare…

I have a babysitter for my son two days a week for a total of 3 hours each day. And I work for two hours after my husband gets off of work from 3-5pm Monday through Friday. These are the only hours where I can schedule meetings with people where I know there will be zero interruptions, so, during these hours, I make sure to shower, put on makeup, and dress the part of a successful online entrepreneur. Luckily my husband works from home too so I can pass off some of the morning kid duties to him and get a quick shower in if needed. 

Also, our local gym offers childcare for up to 2 1/2 hours without any additional charges. I can workout for thirty minutes and then use the rest of the time for work activities. This allows me an extra 6-10 hours of work time every week if I go 3-5 days per week.

At the gym, I make sure to schedule in the things that don’t require me to show my face or talk to anyone since it’s a public space and also no one wants to see my sweaty non-showered face after a workout. When you only have 2 1/2 hours of child care, do you really want to waste that precious work time with a shower?

Have you caught on yet that you may not get to shower everyday if you’re a mom and an entrepreneur? Who are we kidding? You’re a mom, so even if you aren’t yet an entrepreneur you probably aren’t getting a daily shower anyway. 

Side note: even without a shower, I make sure to schedule in self-care and take care of my skin for anti-aging, and make my physical and emotional health a priority so that I look and feel my best. 

Burn out is no joke, it can take you down hard! The level of energy you embody in your life will be reflected in the results you see in your business, so if you’re showing up at a 5, your bank account may be at a 5. Wouldn’t you rather have a level 10 bank account? But I digress…

You’re probably wondering…

What exactly does a multi-passionate female entrepreneur do during her work hours?

That depends on whether the hours are uninterrupted got-a-shower-in-and-look- presentable hours, or if they’re the squeeze-it-in-during-nap-time-and-at-the-gym hours where I’ll probably get interrupted and/or I’m in a public space. 

During uninterrupted hours I schedule all meetings where I have to show my face on a screen talking to real people – coaching clients, potential clients or customers (a.k.a. sales calls), calls with my business partners, and calls with my virtual assistants (yes that’s assistants plural). You have to delegate your time where you can so you can invest it in activities that bring you joy, energy, and income! (However, it’s important to note that before I could afford a VA, I did everything all by myself, and you can too). 

During potentially interrupted hours I catch up on communications – emails, facebook messenger messages, texts, etc – and I do customer and prospect reach outs via text, messenger, and IG chat to schedule meetings with people that will be held during the uninterrupted hours. I also use this time to write, write, write. 

Side note: since a lot of what I do on social media is about building the know, like, and trust factor with my ideal clients, there are certain things that I don’t believe can be delegated, such as livestreaming valuable content or relationship building activities.   

Also during the potentially interrupted hours, I brainstorm social media content and livestreams, write blog posts, create new online courses, and do all of my social media marketing.  

Unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of dropping everything to create a new course or blog post whenever inspiration strikes. I have to schedule that in during the potentially interrupted time. It’s not ideal to be in the zone of creating something awesome and get side tracked by the baby waking up or some other distraction, but since my uninterrupted hours are so few and far between, I have to reserve those for meetings with actual people. 

How to not get distracted by Shiny Object Syndrome…

The very first thing I do when I sit down at my desk is organize my work day using a time-block journal. Why do I do this? Because I wage a daily and constant internal battle with a lifelong addiction to multitasking!  

Here’s the problem with multitasking – it affects productivity and wastes precious time! As the old adage goes, ‘time is money’ and wasted time means leaving money on the table! 

As a 7 enneagram and multi-passionate female entrepreneur, I tend to always be thinking about what I can do next. I thrive off of being busy, I never slow down during my working hours (heck, I barely break for lunch), and there is always another project calling me from around the corner that needs my attention too! As you can imagine, it can be difficult for me to complete a project.

So, over the years, I’ve discovered a few simple productivity hacks for people with Shiny Object Syndrome. These hacks keep me from getting bored with any one project by introducing variation into my work-flow and ensuring that I actually get the important things done that move the needle in my business and generate income. 

What about after work? 

Well, the work of a multi-passionate female entrepreneur is never done; so you have to become good at self-discipline – clocking in and clocking out, so to speak. Being your own boss means that you get to set your own schedule. Once I had kids, I decided that I wanted to eat dinner every night with my family. I don’t want to miss bath time or the bedtime routine either. These are precious years that I won’t be able to get back. So, once 5:30 rolls around, I clock out and I don’t think about work for the rest of the evening.

Now, you may have to get creative if you have a day job and what works for me and my family may not work for you and your family. You may have to squeeze it in during your commute and on your lunch break. You may have to invest a couple of evenings every week and schedule in time on one of the weekend days to build the income and time freedom you want. But if you’re showing up authentically and in alignment with your core values, I promise the time investment will pay off in spades and you’ll soon be able to create your own schedule without a day job.  

I hope this was helpful to you as you continue on your entrepreneurial journey. What works for me and my family may not work for you and yours; but if you take some of what you learned in this post, apply it to your work day and some of it fits, then my job here is done and and may your days be easier as a result.  

Until next time…