How To Juggle A Job & A Wedding Business

Trying to work full time (or part time) and grow your wedding business at the same time can be tricky and exhausting but it doesn’t have to be that way. I love simplifying things so this post is dedicated to helping you work on both your day job and your business without going crazy. I’ve been there and this is what I’ve learned.

Know What Is Important To Grow Your Business & What Is A Waste Of Time

When you only have a limited number of hours to work on your business each week, you have to get very smart about how you spend your time. So tell me this – what are you actually doing when you’re working on your business?

The fact of the matter is that none of are really too busy, we’re just not organizing ourselves properly. The busiest billionaires and world leaders have the same 24 hours that we have but the difference is that they are very intentional about what they spend time on. They don’t spend 2 hours on Twitter or watch marathons of Mad Men when they could be getting something significant done. Do your tasks actually move your forward or do they leave you spinning your wheels?

Challenge: Keep track of what you actually do each day for your business for a week. Cut the stuff you don’t need and track the rest with Google Analytics to see if what you’re doing is actually driving traffic and bookings.

Tools Are Your Best Friend

There is a tool for everything and using them well can save you a TON of time. I schedule all of my social media updates for the week in 30 minutes with Buffer (find out exactly how to do that here) which is a task that would normally suck hours out of my week. There is no reason for you to manually do things that tools can do for you.

Challenge: Once you see what you’re spending time on from doing the last challenge, take some time to see if there are tools that can automate those tasks and processes for you. IFTTT can control your thermostat in your house so I’m sure you can find a tool for anything you need. If you need specific recommendations just leave a comment!

Make Use Of Your Down Time

What do you do on your lunch break? What about while you commute to and from work? You could be using that time to listen to podcasts or audiobooks (here are some recommendations) that will help you get better at marketing and growing your business.

Need some help on creating your marketing strategy and attracting more clients? Come join us inside The Wedding Business Collective – it’s everything you need to grow your wedding business in one place (including my personal support).

Challenge: Where are there gaps in your day that you could fill with listening to something educational or writing a quick blog post?

Schedule & Batch

If I don’t schedule something, it’s not going to get done and I know I’m not the only person like that. Scheduling things ahead of time will make your life easier so why not do it? I make appointments with myself and block time out in Google Calendar at the beginning of every week.

Take time to schedule repetitive tasks in your calendar and where possible batch them together. Batching tasks is the process of putting similar tasks together so that you can take advantage of the momentum that you build. You might already do this with your accounting but I can be used for any task.

If you publish 1 blog post per week, it will be much easier to spend an afternoon each month writing all 4 posts than trying to come up with something the night before it goes live. You can also do this with things like client meetings, phone calls, social media, the list goes on and on. The idea is to put these tasks together so you don’t have to interrupt your workflow to try to do the task at the last minute. This will seriously supercharge your productivity.

Challenge: Once you know the valuable tasks you need to do from Challenge #1, schedule them and batch them together if possible.

Use Your Job To Fund Yourself

When you think you’d be better off just taking the leap before you’re ready, keep in mind that you are able to fund your business if you have a job and that is a big perk. Having a job while building a business can be a great asset because you can use your existing income to fund your business.

It is easier for you to hire an assistant than someone who quit their job and is watching their bank account balance decrease by the day. People look at the most successful people in the world and see that they don’t spend their time doing tasks they hate but they assume this is a perk of being successful. In actuality, this is how you become successful. By building a team and training them properly you can essentially clone yourself. There are some things that only you can do, but most things can be done by someone who is particularly good at that specific task. You don’t need to and can’t do everything yourself.

Challenge: Chris Ducker is my go to guy on all things in this area so read a few of his super helpful posts about working with a virtual assistant including one on 101 tasks you can outsource to your VA.

Did I miss anything here? Is there something that you do that really helps you juggle both your day job and your wedding business?