Half a Step Over

Starting to Build a Business

I’ve been working on building my client base so I can do more editing from home, and don’t have to think about going back to a staff job. If I can do that, I’ll have more freedom to travel with my husband when he has business trips, visit the children—and grandchild--and just plan my own hours. Plus, I can approve my own vacation time and not have to rely on others to “allow” me to go. I’ve been lucky in that I know people who like my work, and recommend me to their friends. Networking has been good to me, but I also need to find more clients.

This morning I read an article by Richard Branson  comparing parenting with business. I couldn’t agree more. There were a couple of paragraphs that really appealed to me. Time management is always key. Years ago, when I went back to work full-time, I did it without “breaking back in” to the business world. On Friday I was a stay-at-home mom. The next week, I was working full time but essentially trying to maintain everything I did as mom. Fortunately, my children were a little older and could take care of themselves a bit more, especially in getting home from school. After a while, I started to ask for help. There was no reason they couldn’t throw in the wash, or get something started for dinner. They knew how, and were old enough to handle hot items.

And I agreed when it talked about learning things “on the fly.” I try very hard to never say that I can’t do something, or don’t know how to do things. I might say that I have a little less experience with something, but I know how to do research, and can almost always find a blog or a board, or a site that tells me the basics of what I need to know. In that first job, I knew how to edit, and had minimal experience in Quark (yes, I go far enough back that magazines were being laid out in Quark), but knew almost nothing about article acquisition or making contacts that would get me to who I needed. I was lucky to have editors-in-chief who pointed me in the right direction, but they were all really doing those jobs as sidelines to their main careers so their input was limited although well intentioned. (Yes, it was not how you normally hear of a magazine being run, but then again it gave me huge experience in dealing with all kinds of people and problems, and I managed. I think I only really fell apart once and started to lose it in the office. After that, I learned to hold on until I could go into the ladies’ room and hit my head against the stall for a bit so that I didn’t lose it in the office, something that is never a good idea.)

That job taught me to just deal, and after I left there, I was able to handle a lot of problems without missing a beat. To this day, I’m not afraid to deal with whatever is thrown at me. The worst that can happen is that it will take me a little longer to figure it out—but I’ve never missed a deadline, even when a client is late on their end, and I don’t intend to do so. I may have to stay up most of the night to finish something, but it gets done.

The other topic that struck me is sleep deprivation. Yes, when they were small, the kids kept me up. Now I have trouble emptying my mind at night, so between that and the arthritis, I don’t fall asleep well. Then again, some of my better ideas also pop into my head at 3 a.m. Unfortunately, I can’t turn on a light to write them down, so I have to trust that I’ll remember them at 8 a.m. Most of the time I do, and I take the view that if I can’t remember an idea, it either wasn’t that good or it will come back later. I’ll probably be up another night anyway and can rein it in then.