5 things I'm thankful for in my business
In some capacity, I imagine that we are all getting ready for the big day on Thursday. Here in the U.S., Thanksgiving is a huge deal and one of the biggest (and tastiest) holidays that brings families together to eat, maybe watch football and most likely fall into a multitude of turkey comas. Because most of us are busy traveling, prepping meals or finalizing our Black Friday shopping lists, I’m going to make this week’s blog short and sweet.
What better way to add to the celebration of Turkey Day, than to truly reflect on and give thanks for the biggest blessings in our businesses? Although I’m very lucky myself and there are too many to name, I will state my five biggest ones. Maybe they’re a few of yours, too…
1) Clients
Clearly, without our clients, we don’t have businesses. We have nothing to work for and we are broke. They need us to create beautiful work, but we need them even more. I’m thankful for my monthly design service relationships, as well as my branding clients. They make my “untethered” world go ‘round.
2) Flexibility
While there are so many perks to working for yourself or running an online business and most of the time working from home, having flexibility is the best part for me. We all know that although we work more than most people and sometimes more than 40 hours in a week, we can also give ourselves a day off if need be. We can take a mid-day break and throw in some laundry, start dinner or run other errands. And when we’re working, we can work from anywhere – the couch, bed, kitchen counter or coffee shop. The possibilities are endless when the only tools that we need are our laptops + Wi-Fi.
3) Passion
Not everyone in this world wakes up happy and excited to go to work. Some people work their entire lives working for an ungrateful boss, not making enough money and getting sucked into a tireless routine. I’m so thankful that I can truly say that I love what I do. While I have stayed on track with knowing what I wanted to do after high school, worked through four years of college to earn a degree in design and have held nothing but design-related jobs for the last eight years, I also still get joy from working. I know that not everyone can do what I do, I serve a special purpose to my clients and I really help people and their businesses at the end of the day. It doesn’t get much better than that.
4) My mastermind group
If you’ve been following this blog for the past few months, you probably know that I took a big leap and hired a business coach this year. With that, I got to be apart of a small group of six other female entrepreneurs around the country and we formed a mastermind group. Throughout the six-month program, we committed to meeting every single Monday for a couple of hours and check in, find out what everyone was working on, help where needed and pick brains. Although the coaching is over, the girls and I still meet weekly as we always did and we plan to continue to for as long as we can. Hiring a coach and meeting this group of amazing ladies really helped me change my business around the last half of this year and I look forward to gaining even more wonderful insight and advice from them, to help square my business up to be even more successful in 2017. When you’re a solopreneur especially, you need to have someone hold you accountable and to bounce ideas off of. This group is my support system because they understand exactly what I’m going through in running a business, because they’re doing it with me. I highly recommend joining one! Check out some of your favorite Facebook groups for meet-ups (online or local to you.)
5) Challenging work
Although I love what I do and I am good at it, I can definitely say many days are challenging. There are times when clients can be less than ideal, no one is happy or work isn’t coming in the door as quickly or easily as it did a couple of weeks before. Not only can this entrepreneurial journey be challenging, but the projects that I crank out weekly can be, too. However, this is the sour that makes everything so sweet. Without putting in hard work (and in my case, super creative work) I wouldn’t feel so rewarded or enjoy what I do so much. Nothing worth having comes easy. Although many might think being your own boss is nothing but dreamy, those of us who are living and breathing this dream know otherwise. You have to work harder than ever before and put a lot of time into all of your different systems and platforms (the actual work, client-getting activities, social media, blogging, growing your email list, creating opt-in content + much more) in order to get yourself to a point where you can work less, one day. If you’re not feeling tested or ready to give up some days, your heart is probably not in this game 100% and you need to reevaluate things. Embrace the chaos from time to time — because no matter what, you’re still so lucky for getting to do what you do and that is reason enough to be thankful.