Balance between business and crafts

Turning your creativity into a business means you actually have to spend time on building that business. A trip to city hall to register your business is the easy part. Finding a balance between creating and getting your business running is much harder.

I love having my own business, i love earning a living by being creative. But to find the balance? That's whats the hardest part for me. I tried scheduling a couple of hours each day to focus on building the business, leaving the rest of the day to create. I tried. This doesn't work for me. I loose myself (and time!) in what i do. If i'm on a roll working on my crafts or illustrations, i don't keep track of what the clock says. If the creative flow is there, i need to take advantage of it. Same goes for business related tasks. The only thing i love to not have to do, is administration, especially when tax time is there. If there is anything that depresses me about having your own business it's taxes.

Other tasks you can expect to have to focus on when you turn your creativity into a business are:
Marketing - Promoting your business, getting the word out. Be active on forums, post on your own blog and leave comments on other blogs, analyse visitor stats, design promo items like freebies and businesscards, newsletters, and submit links to sites/magazines/blogs.
Inventory - What you have in stock. Build up stock levels and keep track of it, analyze what works and what doesn't. Make sure you have enough supplies, photograph your products, weigh them to calculate shipping, write product descriptions, upload to site.
Customer Care - Treat your customers as your new best friends. Answer emails promptly and have a clear Faq on your site.
Paperwork - Like i said, my least favorite of tasks. but when tax time comes, you'll be happy and proud of yourself if you did keep a good overview of inventory, sales and expenses.
Processing Orders - This is what all your hard work is for, getting your items to your customers! Packing orders, writing personal thank you notes, get packages to the post office (hopefully lots of trips to the PO).

In a perfect tale there would be an amazing assistant doing these things so there would be time for me to only focus on creating. But this is a one-woman-show. I always end up wishing i did more and thinking i could have done more.

Another thing is that there isn't a boss that keeps you on track. Being your own boss is a luxury, but you do have to keep yourself motivated and disciplined. My motto is, if i can work hard for a boss, i can work even harder for myself.

A couple of tips to manage your time:
- Try not to work on lots of things at the same time, focus on one thing until it's finished and start the next. This way you give everything the attention it deserves.
- Keep a reasonable to do list and cross out tasks as they get done. Reasonable in a way that you have all urgent and important things to do, but without overwhelming yourself.
- I like to group tasks that relate and do them back to back. Like a marketing morning or an administration afternoon.
- Make sure you give yourself some downtime. Take a 15 minute breather with a cup of tea and your favorite magazine or go for a short walk, great to get new inspiration and you'll feel refreshed and energized to get back to work.
- An online presence (being on forums and blogs) is important, but beware, it's easy to get 'addicted' and before you know it you've spend half the day reading amazing blogs. (trust me, i've been there)

What do you do to manage your time?