They say starting a company is misery. Or is it misery loves company? Well, whatever the expression is…. Some of you are at the start of your entrepreneurial journey, so this episode seemed like a good time to share some memories of the beginning days of Check Off Your List.
I have to warn you, this episode is going to be a little bit different from what I anticipate talking about on a regular basis. Much of the beginning days of my business were spent balancing the demands of being a new mom with those of a new business owner, so we’re going to talk about some mom stories. That doesn’t mean this is a momboss podcast. We’re all balancing various parts of life AND our business. As you listen to me discuss my journey, you’ll see that this is kind of the point. What I mean is, though we’re all living our unique, individual lives outside of business, the thing we all share, no matter our stage in life, is that outsourcing is something that will enhance your business and personal lives, just like it did mine. In fact, I’m totally confident that following me along on the early days of my personal journey will show you how outsourcing is one of the best ways to keep all areas of life distinct.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but for now no one said this is easy. Yeah social media often portrays highlight reels, but that’s not what we do around here. We’re going to get real with it: The journey to success is no easy path, and I’m no different. No pain, no gain. Am I right? Success comes by pulling through and overcoming rough days, weeks or even years. You get it. We’ve all been through some rough patches, and my guess is you’re probably thinking of a specific time in your life right now as I’m talking about this.
Wherever you are in your entrepreneurial journey, it’s important to keep perspective, and it’s especially important to remember the difficult times, because they help us appreciate the good times even more. Like any busy person, sometimes I become overwhelmed by my to do list or frustrated because I feel like I’m not making progress. I’ll admit, sometimes I’m just generally discontent because my overachiever tendencies ask more of me than I can accomplish in a day. What I’ve learned though is that I can change my outlook on life by making the conscious effort to focus on the good things in life, on my achievements. It’s amazing when I think how I am currently living things that 5 years ago Rachel or even 1 year ago Rachel could only dream about. That doesn’t mean life is perfect by any stretch, but simply remembering how far I’ve come can be the encouragement I need to keep going further and to push past real (or imagined) limitations and obstacles to my goals.
One of these goals is Check off your List. The idea behind Check Off Your List came about when I saw a demand for as needed back-office support and knew there was a solution to the problem most small business owners struggled with on a day to day basis. You see, my parents were restaurant owners, and I realized how beneficial it would have been for them to have an expert in marketing or bookkeeping or HR to turn to when they needed guidance or help. Who doesn’t wish they could pick up the phone or shoot off an e-mail about a payroll tax question or a marketing piece rather than devote hours of their time figuring it out on their own or with the help of Google? In reality, the concept behind Check Off Your List was something that developed over time, but my experience as the child of businesses owners gave me an awareness of how much business owners could benefit from an ever-evolving remote team of back office support professionals.
It sounds like I was thinking about the benefits of remote work and planning my future company instead of going out with friends in high school. I mean, some of my high school memories are sitting in my Dad’s office helping with bookkeeping and running payroll for his company. But I did have friends in high school. I promise …
I founded Check Off Your List out of a desire to control my schedule. While I was pregnant with my oldest, my job was essentially eliminated due to changes in the direction of the company. I found myself very large and sitting on the couch with, quite frankly, not much to do. At that point, I had a choice about what to do with those months before our baby arrived. It turns out this waiting and boredom was a blessing because it gave me the time to remember that my parents trained me by example to be an entrepreneur. So instead of just creating a larger dent in my couch, I used those days to start a business while creating a crevasse in the couch.
As it grew—the crevasse in my couch….. but ok my business, too– I designed some marketing materials in Microsoft Word of all things (which I would never show to the current Check Off Your List marketing team because wow, they were primitive).
But I printed those marketing materials and I attended networking events. I can vividly remember one night. There was a speed networking event hosted by Synergy National, a business referral group in Columbus, Ohio. I didn’t want to drive the hour to the meeting, but I knew I needed to do the things I didn’t want to do if I was going to make Check Off Your List work. So, I told the couch not to worry and that I’d be right back, put heels on my swollen feet and went. Would I have rather sat at home with snacks resting on my ever-expanding belly? Absolutely. Did my determination to make the right choice vs. the easy choice make a difference in Check Off Your List? It certainly did, just like it continues to every single day. Why do I remember this night so well? Because it was then I met one of Check Off Your List’s first clients, and that client ended up making up a significant percentage of sales for those first few years.
I’m trying to express that early on in Check Off Your List, I made a habit of choosing the right thing instead of the easy thing. I chose to pick up my laptop and write a busines plan even though I only had one client, because I knew the time I spent planning where my business was going would guide me to more ideal clients. I could have watched movies with my spare time or spent that time preparing for the new little person that I was going to be 100% responsible for. Instead, I built a poorly branded website with a WordPress template. Ultimately, I took the steps and actions I could take at the time.
Now, these kinds of tasks are not things I take care of anymore. I have a marketing team for our marketing needs– they’re excited to do it and do better work in half the time. Years ago, however, I had no idea where to find the resources to meet my needs or budget. I did what I could to promote Check Off Your List with the resources I had available, and in the beginning that meant doing everything myself.
My first business coach, Deb Aungst, – I can never say thank you enough to Deb – she often said, “Activity begets activity.” I saw the evidence of her acumen as the activity I could control evolved into activity in areas I couldn’t control. I remember realizing there was no way—there still isn’t—any way to force a potential client to trust me with their business support. There are things I can’t control, but I took responsibility for the activities I controlled, like writing a business plan, and a snowball affect happened. Activity in the areas I controlled brought activity in the areas that I couldn’t control. The philosophy I’d been a little skeptical of at first began to ring true. Admittedly, I didn’t fully understand what Deb meant at the time, but now as I look back over the years I understand the wisdom of her words. I guess you could say that putting my trust in her was a sacrifice. I sacrificed the certainty that I knew best and trusting what was comfortable.
But in this case, and in many more, sacrifices have paid off. Oh, and there certainly were many sacrifices, especially starting my business. For instance, in those early days I made personal sacrifices to always put clients first. I did things for my business that sound unbelievable now, but that’s what successful business owners tend to do. They sacrifice personally for the success of their business.
Like, I distinctly remember being in the early stages of labor with Adelina, and answering a client phone call while lying on my back in the maternity wing. It was a one-woman show then—an extremely pregnant woman—so I gritted my teeth during the contractions and frantically caught up on notes and responded to the conversation the best I could between contractions. I laugh about now, but it was survival.
Now, you probably don’t relate to working while in labor, but I guarantee you’ve made some painful sacrifices as you figure out what it looks like to be an entrepreneur and struggle to find a balance between everything pulling you in different directions.
As we were waiting to be discharged, my nurse walked in while I wrapped up a call with a potential client, and she made the comment, “You’re already a pro at balancing work and being a mom aren’t you.” Little did I know this was just the beginning of juggling work, family, and many, many other things.
That initial balancing act at the hospital was good preparation for an even more stressful ordeal I had when on maternity leave for Christian, my second child. I had planned for my maternity leave and had all my ducks in a row, or so I thought. Still though, it was just me, so with even the best planning if something went wrong or a client’s plans changed… I was responsible. This time, it was a client event. All the arrangements were in order. Venue, food, invitations, everything was good to go. The day before the event, the venue changed their availability. It was the holiday season, so they reserved the right to change reservations. My client knew, but they were less than thrilled about the venue’s alternate accommodations. Of course, it fell on me to fix, so rather than enjoying the newborn smiles and baby cuddles—you know, those little things you never forget even when your child is all grown up— I ended up balancing a newborn in one arm and making phone calls with the other, all the while praying my toddler napped long enough for me to solve my client’s issue. I have always been committed to my business, but it came at a price. One of the things I committed to from the beginning is completing projects before they’re due. This has often meant sacrificing sleep or truly important things like dinner with my husband, Colin. It’s hard to say I regret it when these sacrifices have paid off greatly for my family, but what mother would not regret missing playtime with their child because a task would take longer than anticipated? In my mind, it had to be done early and really I’m lucky that Colin was willing to fill in for this busy mommy, because if I said I would do something for my clients and businesses, I did it, but I wish I had known the value of a team back then. Projects could have been completed on time and completed with excellence, and I wouldn’t have missed some of that family time to do it.
Whether you have zero employees or you’re Amazon, running a successful business requires excellence, and excellence means sacrifice. It’s always easier to put things off for another day. It’s always easier to tell yourself something is good enough as it is. As I said earlier, I’m a human being living in the 21st century, which means of course there were and still are times I’d prefer to watch Netflix instead of worrying about the important business stuff. But from the beginning I knew that’s not how I wanted to run Check Off Your List. That’s not how I wanted to live my life.
Now, none of this sounds revolutionary on its own as I’m saying it out loud, but over the years, I’ve found how rare these qualities are in the business world. Looking back, yes, it was difficult, but I realize now that I was determined to put in the work, rain or shine, and to focus on the things I could control about Check Off Your List. With limited resources and budget, I knew the best way to build a loyal client base was through cultivating relationships and building trust – pillars I still use to guide decisions today. If I had the knowledge of what a team could do for me and my business, I would have utilized a team more quickly. I wouldn’t have designed my brochures in Word or built my own website or spent hours pouring over employee contracts if I realized the potential for growth that I can only attribute to outsourcing.
In hindsight I was particularly lucky in my situation and a confluence of factors came together to put me in the right situation to start and nurture a business: my background in small business, freedom from a 9-5 job, a stable, financial situation, and a very hands-on husband who happily filled in with our little ones. This meant I had the option of making the necessary sacrifices, no matter how difficult, to have one of the most important ingredients for a successful business: time.
Most business owners, especially early on, aren’t blessed with this valuable resource. Your business might be in the fledgling stages. You’re doing everything there is to do, and without you literally zero would get done. Or maybe you’re already past the early stages, and you’re now at that stage where it’s no longer feasibly possible to get it done on your own.
So, you’re trying to figure out how to get the help you need, and that’s what I’m here to walk you through. Over the years, I have pinpointed my personal strengths and the areas where I impact Check Off Your List more than anyone else can. Along the way, I’ve developed a system to find people talented in the other areas. Outsourcing and utilizing a team environment have allowed my business to grow exponentially and have revolutionized my day-to-day life. I can honestly say my life is better now that I have others covering my personal gaps. And Check Off Your List is growing more quickly now that I don’t have to be everything to everyone. It’s a beautiful thing.
Believe me, I still work hard, but now that I have maybe a second (or two, on good days) to pause, breath, and reflect, I can see more clearly that while the early days were rough, they were worth it to get to where I am now. More importantly, I can set aside time to relax and spend time with my family. I can devote time to memorizing lines, costume fittings, and rehearsal schedules because there is a team of people who are better at doing the things I struggled with. The great thing is you can experience this too.
You don’t have to be everything to everyone in your business, and I encourage you to take steps towards your personal freedom. Think through your day. Pinpoint the areas where you personally shine. Think of the tasks you thrive on doing. You know what I’m talking about – the things that energize you rather than exhaust you. Those are the reasons you chose your given industry, and all those other things? Over time, they can be transitioned to someone else, someone who shines doing those tasks and who is passionate about solving those problems for you.
As you learn to check off your list through strategically using a team, your productivity increases but requires less time in your day, your business grows exponentially because your impact in your business increases, and your quality of life improves as you devote your time to what drew you to your business in the first place.
Now a days, I don’t have to put on my heels and head to Columbus unless I want to. And if I do, it’s probably for a hot date night with my husband or drinks with a few friends rather than a networking event… thanks to the competent people I’ve learned to put my trust in.
For more insight on getting tasks of your to do list and onto someone else’s, tune into the next episode, and while I don’t know a magic fairy to check off your list. I will introduce you to the next best thing: a virtual assistant. Click play on that next episode of Checking Off Your List with me, Rachel Luther, to learn about the different types of virtual assistants and the ins and outs of how they can help you focus on the things that truly make you love being a business owner.
