Losing my mind!

lsw-x

It is a good idea to start your own business, right? Make a little side money doing what you enjoy? Right??? SOMEONE AGREE WITH ME HERE!!

Ok – I’m calm.

Chris and the kids went skiing without me tonight. Not because of my ankle. I was willing to give it the ol’ college try with the ankle and all. No – I didn’t go with them tonight because I’ve waaaaaaaay tooooooo much work to do for some new clients that I’ve obtained over the past week.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the hell outta doing graphic and web design! It’s my hobby that I’ve turned into a nice little side business that I really enjoy doing. It just seems that lately (read: past 6 months, or so) – I’ve been SO busy with it. Which is an incredibly GOOD thing.

Tonight is just one of those nights where I’m swamped with it. I have issues with multi-tasking and paying attention to only one thing at a time. Not always, but sometimes – and tonight is one of those times that I can’t seem to focus on what needs doing!

Alright – I should be using past tense with that – – because while the kids and Chris have been out skiing — I did get done what I needed to tonight. And actually, once I sat down and just really concentrated on focusing on one thing at a time – – I got through it a lot sooner than I really thought I did.

I do it to myself. 90% of it is work I do for paying clients — the other 10% is work I’ve either traded out for goods in return, or for family and really close friends to whom I owe favors to. This hobby turned business of mine works for me on so many levels. Quite honestly, if it steps up a few notches – – I’m seriously considering cutting my hours at work down to part time . . . maybe 24 – 32 hours per week. This month alone, I’ve billed over $6,000. That’s just an estimate – to give an idea of the volume of work I’m doing over here.

Any small business owners out there? I mean, really, really small? Did you start your business while you held down a full time position somewhere else? At some point did you make the decision to give up your regular full time job and venture out into being self-employed 100%? How scary was that? At what point are you confident enough to make that decision?

It’s not like I’m making widgets over here. The service that I provide is tangible – but, it’s fleeting. The business keeps getting busier and busier – however, my biggest fear is the minute I make the leap into exclusive full time self-employment . . . well, that’s when the requests and orders with new clients stop coming in. I just am not confident it’s consistent enough work to base a living off of. Except for the fact that I’ve been crazy busy consistently for the past 6 months. By what bar should I measure it, I wonder.

I talked to my mom about it because she went to work for herself and did just fine, quite honestly. I asked her those same questions and she was of absolutely NO help. Her reply??? “Well, Chris makes plenty of money – if the two of you would just get married, you could afford to cut down to part time or even quit, in order to give the business a try without worrying about health benefits.”

Arrrgggghhhh! Not exactly the response I was looking for there.

Anyways – the ski bums won’t be home for another 2 hours, or so. Now that I’ve wrapped up my work for the night, it’s time to make a nice hot mug of java and sit back to relax a bit.

Really. I’m ok.

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4 thoughts on “Losing my mind!”

  1. I think that if you can successfuly “bank” your earnings from your day job for 6 months and live on your web design earnings only during that time you’re all good and should do web design full time! Keep in mind health insurance and 401K issues though–make sure that self employment will be viable long term. Good luck!

  2. Excellent advise, Richmond – thank you for that. The health insurance and 401K are the big issues for me. I think I’ll start with banking those checks from my day job and seeing what happens over the next few months. I worry that my surge in business over the past few months has been a fluke and the minute I take the leap – it’ll be over. lol

    Thanks!

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