Tag Archives: planning

A Bigger Business is Not Always Better

We often talk here in the Home Business blog about ways to grow and expand our businesses. Growth, overall, is considered a good thing. We need our businesses to grow and expand in order for them to stay healthy. Many of us are a little wary, however, about how big we really want to get. After all, we may have started our home businesses precisely because we needed something small and manageable and we wanted to get away from that big corporate mentality. The question we ask ourselves is whether or not a bigger business is necessarily a better one? … Continue reading →

Graduation—Part Five—Planning the Party

Yesterday, in my series on Graduation and all of the tasks, trials, and joys that come along with it, I wrote about the decision-making process of whether to even have a party or not. You might think that a party is obligatory, but it’s not. I think it is really up to the graduating student as to what he or she wants to do. If you have decided to have that bash, however, you now have to come up with a plan—the theme, budget, menu, decorations, etc. Planning the party can be a challenge in the midst of everything else … Continue reading →

Getting Things off Your Plate

Working in a more traditional job with coworkers, departments, and “teams” means that a person can delegate. We get to pass things off onto someone else or shift it to another department. Working for ourselves in our home businesses usually means that we are chief cook and bottle washer and there is not anyone we can really delegate to. This can result in our getting overwhelmed, overextended and having far too much on our plate. Even if we are a one-person show, we do need to find ways to shift some things off of that plate so we can focus … Continue reading →

Why do I Get Suspicious when Things go Smoothly?

I like to think that I am an optimist at heart. When it comes to my home business and work efforts, however, I have to be honest—I tend to expect things to be rough and hard. When things are going smoothly and seem to be falling into place, I get quite skeptical. I just have this sneaky feeling that something major is about to go wrong… Many of you know by now that organization is my crutch (particularly when it comes to my business)—I depend on getting things organized and all my ducks in a row in order to make … Continue reading →

Standardize What Works Well

Do you ever feel like you are reinventing the wheel with your home business or at least that you forget what worked so great for you last month and have to relearn it? I find that, especially with tasks and activities that do no occur daily (maybe things you only have to do once a year–like taxes), it is easy to figure out a great system and then forget it in the interim until you have to do it again. Even though your business is likely small–if you have something that is working well, it might make sense to standardize … Continue reading →

Review What You’ve Done at the End of the Day

I often find that the best way for me to make plans for my next work day is to look back over what I have accomplished during the current day. This means that if I’m keeping track of what I am doing during the day, I should be able to do a quick review, see what has been accomplished and what is being left unfinished, and decide what needs to be scheduled for the next work day. I know someone who does not keep an hourly log for the work she does, but at the end of every day, while … Continue reading →

A Working Budget Demands Prioritizing

Having a budget written down on paper does not do much good unless you actually use that budget to guide your business. A working budget needs to be user-friendly and it needs to be an accurate representation of both where you are now with your home business and where you want to go. In order to make a budget fully functional, you will need to prioritize what is important and what you really want to make happen in your operations. Every person is different and that is why businesses are all different. If you want to truly stay motivated and … Continue reading →

What Can You Prepare them For?

Preparation is huge—whether we are preparing for a busy weekend, studying for a test, or preparing ourselves for a job interview, as adults we know that preparation can mean the difference between success and failure. As parents, we can incorporate preparation into how we teach and guide our children. Instead of trying to deal with things after the fact, it might be worth our while to ask ourselves what we can do to help prepare our children in advance. I found with my children that the more factual and helpful information I could give them before something happened, the better … Continue reading →

Consider Substitutions

I wrote earlier today about how sometimes the best time management choices we can make as single parents is to make changes and adjustments to what we are trying to do in the course of a day or week. The same thing goes for other areas of our lives. Instead of trying to force something or holding out for perfection, the best thing might be to consider making a substitution. What can we do instead? Is there something that will satisfy our need or want as well that does not cost as much or take as long? I am not … Continue reading →

Ask the Question: “What is the Possible Impact?”

Looking to the future may be one of those things that our children do not exactly do well, but as parents, we might be reacting in the moment too and not thinking about how our choices and responses today can have a lasting impact down the line. Sure, we are going to react passionately sometimes and we may even say and do things in our parenting without thinking much about what we are doing—but whenever possible we can ask ourselves what the possible impact of our personal choices is, and teach our children to do the same. Life really is … Continue reading →