Inspiring Women: how real women succeed in business
However, what I’m not and have no plans to be is a mother and what this book is screaming at me is that to be a ‘real woman succeeding in business’ I have to have the added challenge of raising a family and spending enough time with the kids etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m full of admiration for women who do manage to do both, but that’s just not who I am. I find it hard enough getting a decent work/life balance as it is! But, my idea of reading about how women have succeeded in business is more about learning about their experiences running the business, not the children bit.
Overall I did find the book very interesting but I found the focus on being a mother increasingly frustrating and at some points (which I quickly talked myself out of) began to feel inadequate for my lack of offspring. Does everyone have to be introduced as ‘blah, mother of three’ – if it was a book about men in business that wouldn’t happen. It seemed that even the types of businesses covered were fluffy women-friendly ones – maternity clothes, baby food/toiletries, fashion, secretarial. Let’s face it I obviously don’t fit into the target audience for the book – if I was a mother thinking of setting up a business I’m sure I would find the book incredibly inspiring.
How about a book about women succeeding in male-dominated industries … like web design for example? They can be women with or without children, I don’t mind, just don’t make it all about the motherhood.
Rating: 
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Fighting the fatigue
Two weeks since I lasted posted, that’s not good. Does that mean my good intentions immediately went out the window? Well, not entirely I hope. The last couple of weeks have mostly been more of the same (work, work, work) but there have been two noteworthy events:
- We’ve arranged for someone to come to us for four hours a week to help out with admin (yay!)
- We’ve had an approach which might result in us having the backing to do a project that we’ve been thinking of for a while (all very hush-hush at the moment, but it could be exciting stuff)
My latest ‘personal development’ project is to see if I can do something about my energy levels. I don’t know what it is but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling really tired all the time. Could just be the time of year I suppose. Anyway, on Saturday I picked up a book on GI from the library and have few other books on various energy-related subjects on order. The GI thing is all very convincing in theory but this one seems to think that you should have time to cook three times a day. Yeah right! I’ll have to see what I can get out of it without necessarily following the eating plans to the letter.
Running off to join a circus
I’m thinking of running off and joining a circus. What do you think? I’ve been doing so much juggling this week that I’m sure I’d make an excellent clown. Seriously though, it’s one of the skills you need to run a business isn’t it … juggling that is? There’s never just one thing to do and it’s impossible to ever sit down and just work solidly on something because there are always interruptions. It’s just one of those things when you run a business.
The trick I guess is to keep all those balls up in the air without getting phased and dropping any of them. Can I claim to be able to do that? Not always entirely successfully. Especially towards the end of the day when I’m just trying to tie things up for the day but people keep popping up with more things for me to do/sort out. But on the whole I do think I’m pretty good at it. I can keep quite a lot of information in my head at one time so that if I get an enquiry about something I have a pretty good idea of where we are with it. I’ve also been developing various ways of dealing with things – spreadsheets for tracking projects etc. and something as simple as making a list if the ‘urgent’ tasks seem to be mounting up and I feel myself loosing my cool a bit.
Has anyone else got any good techniques for coping with multiple tasks under pressure?
A more positive start to the year
When I blogged yesterday I think I was feeling a bit disparaged by what I’d discovered in our finances. It’s certainly not all bad but let’s say there’s definitely room for improvement. I often get frustrated by the feeling that we’re not moving forward – I work incredibly hard but the business can feel like it’s just standing still.
However, later on after a bit more thought (and a small glass of whisky which may have helped) my fighting spirit kicked in and I decided that 2009 is going to be the year that we turn things around. So there! I know what I want to achieve and have the beginnings of how I’m going to achieve it, so it’s now just a case of knuckling down and doing it.
I think my motto for the next few months will have to be “don’t be afraid of a bit of hard work”. Is it possible for me to work harder than I was already doing? Let’s see, shall we?
New year, new me?
I suspect not. Still the same Emily, still dreaming of running a successful business and having a comfortable lifestyle. After a month of no blogging I’m back determined to post regularly – I’m not going to promise every day but at least a couple of times a week.
We’ve actually been having quite a long break over the Christmas period. We stopped work on the 19th December and are opening for business again on the 5th January. And, miraculously, I’ve mostly managed to keep away from work. Hopefully this will mean that I’ll have lots of energy for the coming weeks.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been easing myself back into a work frame of mind by updating our accounts and reviewing our incomings and outgoings for this financial year. I’ve found some good things and some not so good things. We’re getting to the point where we really need to start taking more money out of the business, but unfortunately things aren’t looking too brilliant on that front. So, the next few months are going to be all about turning things around and seriously improving our turnover. Could be interesting…
