Welcome back for another installment of Entrepreneurial, my monthly journal entry chronicling my experience as an entrepreneur, my victories and failures each month, and the lessons learned along the way.
Hello dear readers and fellow #BossBabes! As this post goes live, my husband and I are already on our Disney World vacation that I told you I had booked last month! I hope you will follow along with our adventures in Disney World by following me on Snapchat as MissTrenchcoat because I am probably snapping up a storm and this is the method by which I plan to “vlog” our trip. But you aren’t here to listen to me describe my vacation, instead, today we are recapping the month of February in terms of how it affected my life and business.
February was a great month and felt like a vacation itself in comparison to January. Last month I told you about how tired I felt because I didn’t take an official break after the holidays and jumped right into 2016 guns blazing! Well, after the successful launch of my Charmed Life Master Class at the end of January, I promised that I was never going to put myself in a situation like that again, so I immediately made some changes in my routine and work schedule. First off, I took a few days off after the Master Class went live and relaxed. I listened to some books on tape, I watched TV and movies and just let myself turn off for a while. I actually spend the first week of February in calls with clients and getting feedback from my audience on different products which was a productive, yet, leisurely use of my time. Talking to my clients reenergized me and it was a very low pressure project to work on that was still very crucial to my business. I also spent the first week of the month working on getting ahead on my blog posts and writing work. Again, pretty low pressure items that were important but didn’t have an immediate decline that caused me stress. By the time the second week of the month rolled around, I was feeling much more under control of my schedule and could devote my time and attention to the major project of the month, which was my Free Photography Webinar “The 5 Photographic Marketing Assets You NEED to Build a Cohesive Brand Online.” I took my time with this webinar, outlining it and pulling together many of my frequently asked questions from my community, applying my best strategies to make sure the webinar was jam packed with information. I spent two weeks working on the webinar before the live event on the 21st which was a tremendous success, and if you missed that webinar, click here to get yourself access to it. During the middle of the month, I also spent a good amount of time working on personal and home related projects. I know it may sound silly but I really needed to shop for new clothes which I had put off for far too long, so I did some online shopping, and also ran some important errands for just day to day items I had run out of weeks ago but had been too busy to take care of. Just spent some time organizing my personal life and making progress on my ongoing goal of keeping my home and life in order! Finally, at the end of the month, during the last week, I had a lot of loose ends I needed to take care of. Small projects that needed to be completed before I left on vacation like cleaning the house, mending clothes, putting together my March #CharmedGTD Photo Challenge and my monthly freebies, planning out my #CharmedBiz Chat (on the topic of taking great photos for your blog and social media… click here to check it out if you missed it) and recording an audio interview for an upcoming episode of the Boss Girl Creative Podcast! So like I said, loose ends, little projects that needed to get done before I could fully relax and take off on vacation!
Okay, so now lets talk about some victories and failures for the month because there were certainly a few of those along the way! First, let’s talk failures! Although I had developed a really good practice of journaling during January, I found that as I was feeling less stressed and more organized thanks to my new routines, I stopped journaling consistently everyday. Journaling ended up being an every other day or every three days event, which made it harder for me to journal because I kept forgetting what had gone on in a day and made the whole life documentation aspect of the journal difficult. I am someone who does what they commit to, and I did make sure to go and fill in the days when I missed, but the failure here was that I broke the habit. Part of this, like I said, was because I wasn’t feeling stressed so I didn’t feel like I had a need to go to my journal and vent, and part of this was that I was spending some “me” time alone in the evenings and getting into bed early, but I would end up falling asleep before I got to the journaling part of my night time routine. Going forward, my solution for this is going to be to try to journal earlier in the day because generally, I don’t have news for my journal after dinner! Another failure for the month was that I fell off my healthy eating kick. I had been doing really well cooking healthy dinners for me and my husband, but again, laziness set in and we ended up ordering out or going out more than we should have, especially since we knew we were going on vacation at the end of the month! My solution for this is going to be instituting meal planning again once I get back from vacation and even an light exercise plan. I find that I’m more likely to eat healthy if I am also doing physical activity so I will be working on that when I get home.
Now for some wins for the month! Obviously, the whole living with less stress was a major win! Being intentional with the amount of work I put on my plate and only doing the activities I see as essential gave me more space in my day to just relax and do the things that make me feel peaceful. Being stingy with my time also meant that I had to be very selective about how I spent my time, which really makes you focus on your priorities. A second win I had for the month was that I started using Snapchat again and have been really enjoying it! I think I may have found my solution for daily vlogging because there is segment of my following that likes seeing what I am up to, but the idea of vlogging myself day over day for a produced YouTube video is daunting and not the way I want to spend my time. It’s a lot of fun and I hope you will follow me on Snapchat — MissTrenchcoat — if you want to see my daily life and adventures!
Overall, February was a great month, I have no complaints and I feel like even my failures for the month are teaching me how I need to be more intentional with my time so that I can build a sustainable life and business that works for me! I’d love to know how your month went, so please make sure to comment below and let me know your wins and “opportunities” for improvement- I think we can all learn from hearing each others experiences so please share!
xoxo,
