A day in the life of a small business owner
The beauty and the beast of being a small business owner is that every day can look different. Part of me loves this flexibility, and part of me has tried hard to implement some kind of routine over the years. I’m just about there!
I help small business owners with their wordpress website design and copywriting, I own a music studio and I run a party band agency. The work I do is varied and my days can look quite different depending on my client commitments.
On a typical day, what works for me is…
One of the best bits of working for yourself is not having to be tied to the 9-5 if that doesn’t work for you. I used to do 9-5 in an office and then 6pm – 11:30pm at the music studio and it was brutal.
Now I don’t have the 9-5 bit, I avoid setting an early alarm and either wake up with my 8am alarm or let myself sleep a bit longer if I’ve worked late the night before and get up around 9am.
If I’m working from home I try to be at my desk for 10am, I then check my emails, messages and ads reporting with a cup of tea. Once I’ve responded to everything I need to, I check my Asana list (more about my love for Asana here!) and to update the tasks I’m working on and set a plan for the day.
Next I take Geoff (my dog) out for a walk, so often I think ergh I can’t be bothered doing this walk, but I always feel a million times better for getting the fresh air and I’m grateful to him for forcing me out!
After the walk I grab some lunch, and often dinner too, then head into the studio.
I try to use my time in the studio for content creation and meetings, it’s usually busy and noisy so I find it hard to focus on website design when I’m there. I save my design days for when I’m working from home.
At the studio we have a variety of musicians in and out all day, some work for us in our party band agency and will be rehearsing for upcoming bookings. Others are hobby musicians who use our space to practice with friends. Although I’m a bit of a hermit during the week, I appreciate being able to mix up working by myself at home and coming into a busy environment that kind of replicates an office atmosphere.
My role at the studio used to be more hands on; helping to set up rooms, cleaning, letting customers in and taking payments. Over the years I’ve been able to automate a lot of the admin side (taking bookings and payments), and now other people do most of the day to day running of the studio.
I’ve always been a big picture visionary type person, I love developing an idea and making it work. Then I’m happy to hand it over to (safe) hands and move onto the next project whilst still providing support to the business as and when needed.
It’s what I’ve done with my music businesses, it’s how I’ve helped other small business owners and it’s how heloiserose.com came about!
I usually stay at the studio until 7pm to chat with my colleagues, say hi to the musicians and let rush hour traffic calm down. Then I head home for a late dinner and ideally some trash TV.
My treat at the end of the day is a hot shower, comfy clothes and some mindless scrolling through tik tok!
If you would like some help creating a website that can automate some of the ‘busy work’ for you, and you want to chat with someone who has hands-on experience of developing businesses, then please get in touch!
