Mars & Venus: Business Ownership
By Michele DeKinder-Smith, Jane Out of the Box Founder
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul.
-William E. Henley-
Why we start businesses
Regardless of gender, entrepreneurs started their businesses because they want to be in control of their own futures. In a survey we conducted recently with over 500 men and women who own businesses, this was the most common theme, cited by 56% of business owners as a factor in their decision to start or buy a business of their own. As further evidence of this desire to master their destinies, both men and women said they wanted to be able to choose the people they work with (40%), were tired of corporate politics (38%), or were tired of having a boss (33%). Clearly, freedom to work in the way one chooses is a huge motivator to those who make the leap to start a business of their own.
Although freedom is important to everyone, it is interesting to note that women and men differ in the ways they may be defining it. Men were more likely to say they started a business because they “wanted financial freedom,” whereas women cited time freedom more frequently. Among women, the desire to master their schedules emerged in two different ways. They were more likely than men to say they “wanted more time to do what they wanted to do” and that they “wanted to be able to be home more for family/children.”
Of course, it’s no surprise that the desire to start a business to be home more for family or children is strongest among women with children at home, and particularly younger children. Of women business-owners, three-quarters started that business at least in part to be able to be home with the children and two-thirds only gave part-time hours to their business. It appears, though, that once the child reaches school age, mom is able to give more attention to her business (with two-thirds or more working in their businesses full-time by this point).
However, the research also shows that women business owners
are more likely than their male counterparts to say that
on a typical day they feel “tired.” And, when asked to describe
their three biggest challenges as business owners, a quarter
of mothers who own businesses cited “balancing work and
family” and a quarter with young children (under 6) also
cited “time management”. Further, nearly half of all women
business owners could not agree that they had adequate time
to take care of themselves.
So what's a woman to do?
Although the preceding tells us there are many stressed-out, tired woman business owners out there, it’s important to know that owning your own business can provide you with the time-freedom and control of your destiny that all entrepreneurs are looking for. At Jane Out of the Box, we know many women who are successful in business while making sure that their business is not running their lives.
The key is in making your ideal lifestyle a bigger priority than saying yes to the many demands and opportunities you encounter every day. Here are four strategies that will help you master your schedule and ensure you have the time freedom you so richly deserve:
Visualize your ideal life. Don’t just think about your business and how big you want it to be. Think about the lifestyle you want it to help you create. There are many ways to grow a business and if you pursue growth without thought to the lifestyle you want, you can grow yourself into an 80-hour-per-week struggle. Once you’ve visualized it (Do you want to travel to exotic places? Always be there for school field trips? Have time to volunteer at the local senior center? Have time for singing lessons?), create a vision board by cutting out magazine images that match that ideal life. Put your vision board where you can see it every single day to remind you of what’s really important.yourself. So add yourself to the list of people you’re taking care of and put yourself at the top -- because unless you take the time to really recharge your own batteries, you won’t have the power to keep taking care of others.
Learn to say no. With your visualized life in mind, create a new habit for yourself. Whenever you are presented with a new opportunity, ask yourself whether that opportunity moves you closer to or farther away from the lifestyle you desire. If it’s not moving you closer to your dream, either renegotiate or “just say no!” With practice, saying no becomes easier.
Leverage other people’s time. When you are exercising your unique gifts and talents, what is an hour of your time worth? Depending on the type of work you do, you can undoubtedly charge $30 - $200/hour or more per hour. So don’t fill up those precious hours working at less than what you’re worth! Are you a great bookkeeper who can charge $40 an hour? For every extra hour you bill, you could hire someone to do two hours of work at $20 an hour – and gain an hour of time! Open your eyes to options like having someone clean your house, run errands, answer phones, do your filing, send out mailings, etc. And don’t think you have to hire help full-time! It’s very possible to hire a virtual assistant to work only a couple of hours a week for you because she has other clients as well.
Think duplication. For everything you do, consider ways you could systematize your process (a documented system gives you the flexibility to easily give “repeatable” work to someone else to do) and/or find multiple ways to use it to create revenue. For example, if you’ve written a great article to teach your clients something, could you turn it into a special report that you sell from your website? Could you create a podcast or repackage portions of it and use it on your blog for marketing purposes? Ask yourself how you can make one piece of work serve your business in multiple ways.
These are just three strategies of many that you could employ to help ensure you have the time freedom you desire. The key here is to recognize that what you focus on gets done – so choose to focus on creating the lifestyle you want and the business will more easily fall into alignment.
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