Strategies for a Successful Mompreneur

Strategies for a Successful Mompreneur

Do you ever wonder what it takes to be a mompreneur who juggles it all?  To be successful, mompreneurs have to become pretty darned good at managing their time.  Those who do not manage their time well, tend to struggle and find themselves stressed, or worse… losing their business altogether.

There are 10 time management skills that most of my clients focus on for success. Employing these skills daily will make a difference for any mompreneur who wants to be successful and less stressed, while juggling it all.

1. Analyze today’s reality.                                                                                              When you begin to analyze your time management skills you must start by taking a cold hard look at today’s reality. Accurate tracking will help you figure out what you are doing well and where your gaps exist. A simple practice is to track your time spent on tasks daily. Splitting those tasks up into the categories that most moms must manage will help you see where you are running into trouble.

2. Plug your time drains and gaps.                                                                      Once you figure out where you’re spending time you can assess whether or not that time is well spent. In the places where you are wasting your time, you must put in planning, routine, schedules, and support that help you get things done in an easier way.

3. Creating SMART goals.                                                                                              It is important to set your goals for both business and personal accomplishments.

When you set a goal keep the SMART acronym in mind:
~   S stands for Specific: make sure both your business and personal goals are very specific.
~  M is for Measurable: your goals must also have a measuring point by which you will know whether or not you have met your goal successfully. One of the surest ways to fail against your goals is to never set a measurable outcome.
~  A is for Achievable:   There is a big difference between a dream and a goal.  Dreams can be lofty and future-focused but successful goals must be achievable.  You can have the biggest goals in the world but if they are not realistic and achievable you will likely not meet them.
~  R is for Results-Oriented: Be sure to create the result you wish within your goal. A result is different than a measure. You can create measures for performance, efficiency, and effectiveness but results are about what you get when you complete the goal.
~  T is for Time-Based: successful goals must be related to the period of time in which you will apply your plan. This is one of the missing pieces for most people and why their goals fail. Without a time limit, you tend to lose focus, become scattered, and risk dropping your goal from your priority set.

4. Prioritize what is most important.
In order for mompreneurs to be successful, they have to start on the inside.  To begin doing the internal work, you need to know what you value. What is most important will help you prioritize your tasks.  By internal work,  I’m talking about starting with your core values. Each person’s core values are different. You may value achievement whereas another may value love. By identifying your core values and then defining them according to you and what you need, you will have a clearer picture when you prioritize the many tasks and activities you need to juggle as a busy mompreneur.

5. Plan it all out.                                                                                                                                                                                                               Never underestimate the value of a great plan!

And, don’t be afraid to plan. You always have the opportunity to change direction if your plan is not working out to your advantage. Planning can be done in many ways but it’s been proven that planning is a separate brain function from scheduling and indeed separate from implementation. It is important to take time apart to plan first.                                                                

6. Manage how to do it.                                                                                                                                                                                          Managing how you do it has to do with the systems and workflows you implement in your life. Often we think about workflows when it comes to working but there are many workflows when it comes to managing your home and children effectively as well. Thinking about the best way to do things can sometimes save you a great deal of time. Asking for input from friends and other small business owners and entrepreneurs can save you loads of time and mistakes.

7. Schedule effectively.                                                                                                                                                                                                     Just like planning, scheduling is a separate activity and deserves some focus for busy mompreneurs.  Scheduling has to do with chunking tasks into categorical functions and then blocking time to complete them. Just as you would schedule a time to go to the grocery store you must schedule time for business development, social media, blog posting, newsletter writing, and networking events.

8. Create maintenance routines.                                                                                                                                                                          Probably one of the most overlooked time management skills for mompreneurs is creating maintenance routines.  Maintenance routines have to do with everything that goes behind managing your household, running your family, and keeping things in a sense of home hemostasis.   Some best practices include assigning certain maintenance routines to days of the week.  This ensures things get done effectively and helps manage your stress level by knowing when and where things will be accomplished at home.

9. React, respond, and re-prioritize.                                                                                                                                                                           One of the most crucial skills for a mompreneur’s success is the ability to be flexible and go with the flow.

You must be able to react, respond, and re-prioritize as things change in your life.

One of the critical skills that make mompreneurs successful is their ability to make decisions quickly with the information that they have available to them at that time. Your ability to be flexible stands in opposition to one of the qualities that sometimes get in the way: perfectionism.  Allowing yourself to let go of perfectionism frees up an entire reality and supports your ability to be successful.

10. Systematize sanity strategies.                                                                                                                                                                                   One person’s sanity strategies may not be the same as another’s. Looking deeper into the sanity dimensions of your space,  your systems, your self-care, and the level of support you receive daily, will help you uncover areas that would be better systematized.  For instance, routine and ritual can be critical success factors when implementing your health and wellness self-care practices.  Signing up for a fitness class, paying for a gym membership, or setting up an accountability partner can be the strategies that help systematize your self-care opportunities.  Something happens when we commit to another person or put money on the table to pay for a class.   Suddenly we have some skin in the game and there is a cost to not completing it.

So that’s it.  Not too much to think about, right?

What Strategies for a Successful Mompreneur Work for You?

Please comment in the section below and let us know how you managed to juggle it all!

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