Having It All: How to Combine Parenting and Your Business Start-Up
Starting a business is an exciting undertaking that requires an incredible investment of time and attention to get off the ground. While, ultimately, small business ownership has the potential to create more professional flexibility and a healthy work-life balance, the early days are time- and energy-intensive. Ensuring you have reliable childcare will be an important element of your successful launch, as will having a fair amount of structure. If you’re ready to find out more, check out the following insight, courtesy of Mommies Reviews.
Pre-Open Planning
One way to ensure a smooth launch is to make sure you’ve covered all your start-up needs. If you haven’t already done it, open a business bank account, create a business and marketing plan, and establish yourself as a limited liability company or LLC. This will help protect you from some types of liability and will create ease in tax filing. If you’ll be hiring employees, it’s important to get a handle on what payroll for startup ventures looks like so that you can stay organized and on top of time tracking, paychecks and taxes. Finally, make sure your office is functional with all the necessary equipment.
Assessing Childcare Needs
The type of childcare you’ll need will depend on how many kids you have, the family and friend support you have within reach, and how old your children are. For example, an infant will need full-time caregiving, while a school-aged child may need significantly less. Having an idea about what you need will be useful when you start looking for prospects. Overestimate rather than underestimate your needs to ensure you have full coverage. If you can define the days and hours you need assistance, that’s great. If your schedule is varied, having one or more caregivers on-call might be more beneficial. The most important element is finding a caregiver you trust. You might consider using a nanny-finding service or checking into centers near your work and home.
Creating Workable Routines
While it’s not always possible to plan your days down to the minute, if you can get into routines (both at work and at home), you’re likely to be less stressed, more productive, and more present. It may take a bit of trial and error to start, but if you can develop general guidelines around your start and stop work times, meals, and childcare timetables, you’ll be ahead of the game. The critical part of the routine is that everyone has expectations, so it won’t feel like you’re choosing work over home or vice-versa — it’s just the schedule for the day, week, or month that everyone becomes accustomed to.
Balancing Work and Family
According to Mental Health America, no matter how carefully you schedule things, you’re going to have days where you will feel pulled in every direction, both by work and family. That’s okay! Remind yourself and your family, as often as necessary, that this start-up phase won’t last forever and will eventually give you a more meaningful work-life balance than what the traditional 9-to-5 job offers. Very young children will adapt and older children will come to recognize everyone has a job — whether it’s going to school or running a company. Let your family see you enjoying and excelling — you’ll be a great role model!
All working parents feel torn from time to time, but families are resilient. Make your best effort to create a balanced approach that doesn’t run you ragged or make you feel like you’re missing out on life.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
