4 mindset tips for new business owners
If you have just started a new business, you probably feel both exhilarated and overwhelmed. There are plenty of practical tips for new business owners about hiring employees or marketing themselves, but you don’t read as much about how to take care of your own well-being. By all means have a great business plan, but you should also keep the tips below in mind.
Get your house in order
First, put your mind at ease. Taking care of practicalities at the outset and putting the right mechanisms in place is a lot easier than scrambling to do it later. In other words, figure out now how to file your quarterly estimated taxes rather than dealing with penalties at the end of the year. You should also make sure that your personal finances are sound and that you have the health and life insurance that you need in place since you are no longer getting it through an employer. Long term care insurance can also add important financial protection, and you may want to look over a guide to find out if adding it to your life insurance policy is the right choice for you.
Set your boundaries
You may not have enjoyed getting up and going in to work five days a week at your old job, but in most cases, it did set boundaries. When you left your workplace, you generally tried to put it out of your mind. Now that you are self-employed, you may find yourself tempted to work all hours. After all, there is always something to do, and more work means more money. You’ll need to learn to set work hours separate from leisure hours, and ideally, find a place to work that is separate from the rest of your life even if you are working at home. In other words, no using the laptop in bed no matter how convenient it seems.
Build relationships
If you are working on your own as opposed to running your own company, it can be isolating. Even those who may not love going into the office each day might find that working alone from home can start to wear on them. If you live alone, this can be even more challenging. You should make an effort to build and maintain both professional and personal relationships. One great way to do this professionally is to sign up for professional development seminars and conferences, which can get you out and meeting people and also can help polish and upgrade your skills.
Treat yourself well
If you compared yourself to your co-workers and often felt you fell short in your old job, entrepreneurship is unlikely to cure that. Instead, your focus may shift to other business owners and the ways in which you think they are doing things better than you. This can be positive when you look at it as an opportunity to learn from colleagues but negative if you use it as an excuse to beat yourself up for not being as outwardly successful or together as they are. Running your own business is stressful even when it’s your dream come true, so treat yourself gently and remind yourself of your positive accomplishments when you compare yourself negatively to others.
