Blog - Entrepreneur Lifestyle

I am in the workplace, yet work from a sunny porch. I'm not in a 9-5 job with an HR department mandating my vacation time and maternity leave, but when I found out I was pregnant, a little bit of fear for my job included itself in the celebrations. I am an entrepreneur, a woman who runs a lot of things at once (not a one-woman-show, but...) and I'm pregnant.


CONFESSION #1: Assumptions
As someone who hires others for project-based jobs, and works with people on an ongoing basis in order to produce website projects for Collective-E and Katie James Pixelated, I have an awareness of children, and if children can affect deadlines I set for clients. The same goes for any life issue, and for any busy contractor who is managing several clients at once, but there is a certain assumption from others once "baby" or "pregnant" is mentioned, that you won't be available anymore, or for a while. My confession is that this does cross my mind that they might be right, despite my total support of mothers working (I don't even like calling it out because I see it as such a normal thing), and my total knowledge that mothers can handle working and raising a family. But the truth is, stuff happens that prevents you from working at your usual pace. And it's not like you can hide your pregnancy. People want to be happy for you, wish you well, and may need to know if you ate all of the wrong foods one weekend, followed by a stupid Wendy's cookie dough Frosty, because it explains why you "fell off the grid" one Monday when you got suddenly sick (what? no more fried fish and chips?). Or, the tests that come up, like the gestational diabetes screening test that takes an hour, requiring you to book projects on that day that do not require you to be online, but that you can work on (designing website mockups, reconciling Amex charges in QuickBooks, answering emails to keep jobs spinning, etc). So...you're still working, you're just working from an OB room, answering email on the iPhone and working with team members to get deadlines done. Not to mention the fact that that that screening test just led to the 3-hour confirmation test for a Tuesday morning at 8:15am, where you'd have to stay in the OB room for 3 hours while nurses draw blood once an hour while you've been fasting. Not to worry. This busy entrepreneur was raised by a mother who always packed her a back of goodies on road trips, so I will not be idle.

CONFESSION #2: Entrepreneurial Life at the End of the Tunnel to the New World
As much as I don't want Collective-E members and clients thinking I will disappear..., will I actually disappear? Will I find that iPhone app that turns the phone into a modem for a Mac (where is that darn thing??) This is a first time pregnancy, so I have no idea what my days and nights will be like, aside from stories people have shared. I confess that I do think my work life will end. I know this isn't true, because if it ended I would be twitching all the way to the kitchen. My mother raised me to have a career, which I have. The only difference is, I never wore all of those suits she bought me, and I don't work for a company that provides for me health insurance (I got that through the Freelancers Union, and now through my husband's union). So even though I know that I won't disappear and that my business will end, I have no idea what it will all look like (members and clients take note: this is just the fear talking... ;) I'm not going anywhere).

CONFESSION #3: Inspired by others I see doing it
One of the best benefits of my career and as co-founder of Collective-E, the entrepreneurs agency with community, is that I am surrounded by other entrepreneurs of like mind and lifestyle. They alone show me that I can do it. That I can raise a happy family and a happy career at the same time.

• Katie Danziger of nomie baby has three children and was so inspired by her experiences with them, that she created her nomie baby car seat cover. She just landed her product in Diapers.com and BuyBuyBaby.com.
• My business partner, Beth Schoenfeldt, is someone who I watch every day balance raising her son with our Collective-E developments, members and clients. Through her, I watch what it is like to be involved with a day care program that she and her son love.
• Cori Snyder Schuman of Celebrity Chef the Game has figured out how to distribute her board game for foodies through Amazon while raising her daughter.
• Outi Putkonan of Mugi Pottery Studio raises two rambunctious children while co-running an Upper West Side pottery studio in NYC, and she's filled that studio to the max with adult and kids classes, Date Night with Pottery, and many other ideas that she cranks into fruition. Our last phonecall was to dicuss website enhancements, which she conducted from the privacy of their coner of an ER while her son got stitches.
• Kathy Malone of the Brooklyn Indie Designers Market on Smith Street. Kathy raises her son, who sometimes helps run the booth, while achieving her dream of starting a weekly market - with a big red and white tent - for independent designers to sell from.
• Gina Papalia Stricks of Grasshopper Pilates in Soho, raises her two children, balancing her daughter's growing desire to mix and match her wardrobe to be as developed as her mother's, and Gina's new studio location and business partners (also first time pregnant!).

This list can go on and on.

The entrepreneurial lifestyle is not normal by any means, but it is liberating. One of my motivations for quitting my job and going out on my own as a website designer was to have my choice of vacation time. My husband works in the film industry, so while his working days can be very long and without break, his actual breaks can be for long stretches where he would take off on adventures. In theory, this is a great idea to tag along. In reality, I tag along, but I have permanent seats in different Paneras and Starbucks around the country that offer free wireless and an environment where I'm not saying "no, sorry I can't come" to family members who may be doing fun lifestyle things. The balance of life with work is maybe my biggest entrepreneurial challenge at the moment because they both bring me joy.

CONFESSION #4: The Lifestyle Balance
Which brings me to my final confession: I am looking forward to the schedule mandates. In college, I watched one of my roommates be so busy, yet get the best grades, have fun with her friends, and work as the manager of a dessert restaurant to support her way through school. In my final two years of college, I stepped up and took on a slew of projects, including a job and studying. My theory was that because of her busy schedule, she had to be planned, and she couldn't procrastinate. She couldn't afford to, or she'd miss deadlines for papers, or be tired at work. I am a person who can meander. I wouldn't call it ADD, I would call it stimulation, which sometimes works in my favor to get other things done that maybe didn't make it to the list but should have. The baby will have needs that must be met. There is no putting off feeding it, like I put off my own lunch. Thankfully, I do have some preparation for this, in that I have a dog and two cats who I love, and it's my dog who I can make time for to walk or pet or feed, which takes time away from working.

Already this pregnancy is improving my work life. It is making me schedule in a way that I only thought about (sad...thinking about how to schedule). I have to take the plunge to bring on an ongoing assistant, a Digital Traffic Controller, that I've been putting off for a year. That is the next logical step in terms of investment in my business, and one that needs to be made, pregnancy or not. So you see, these are all good things!

While researching updated statistics on entrepreneurship, I stumbled across an article by Kelly Spors, a former blogger and reporter for the Wall Street Journal.  The piece was entitled Predictions for Entrepreneurship in 2009, and in it, Kelly and the Wall Street Journal Independent Street team made some forecasts about what was to come in the world of small business and entrepreneurship in America.

Looking back on these predictions created in 2008 as a small business owner in 2010 is interesting....check out their predictions regarding the bumpy year they foresaw coming for all of us last year, while I look for their predictions they made for 2010!

Oh and check out Independent Street when you get a moment!  We're big fans of writers like Raymund Flandez and other members of the WSJ team over there covering small business news nationwide!

http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/12/30/predictions-for-entrep...

There's not doubt it is and has been flu season across the country for quite some time now, and not just flu season, SWINE FLU season.  This is bad enough because the flu is just not fun - it makes life physically and mentally challenging for too long - but when you are an entrepreneur/small business owner it can hurt that much more!  Who's going to take client calls if you are a solopreneur?  Who is going to finish projects even if you have a team (as you KNOW you are all wearing many hats)?  Who is going to fill in the time you miss during the 12 hour days you often work?  We as entrepreneurs rarely take sick leave!  We just don't - often because we can't!  I know an event planner who was back to work within a week of giving birth!  Who  does that !?!  Entrepreneurs do.  Many times because we can't stop - just ask CNN - they know it too!  When you're sick and own a business the story is different!  As their story mentions and is so right about - business owners don't really get sick leave.

Now back to our story.....With these questions abouot what will become of our businesses in our heads we ignore the nagging coughs, the growing fever, or the aching joints.  I know I did.  Here's a confession:  I have felt sick on and off since October!  I consulted my physician over the phone (read: I called my dad who is a doctor because WHO has time to go to the doctor) who told me to get some rest.  My business partners at Collective-E and Red Branch PR both told me to go rest.  But no, I decided I had work to do. 

And then it hit me - full on flu.  I was a mess.  I had fallen (into the flu) and could not get up, and work stopped for me.  Low and behold I was mildly laid up for a week on and off, and what I feared most did not happen: my businesses didn't fall apart, clients didn't freak out, and the world did not end.  I will say  I work on great teams and have great partners and systems and things continued as they should.  I slept a bit but also emailed from bed when I felt better.  I then talked to another doctor and told him I couldn't seem to get better.  Yes, I admitted, I had been out to a few meetings while recovering, I had worked nearly daily (even if from bed under covers), and YES I did utter the phrase "from my cold dead hands" when my business partner tried to take away my laptop while I was working from home (he won). 

My doctor informed me I had "the entrepreneur's flu".  Basically: we work, work, work and then never pull ourselves out of our rut of feeling crummy and sick - sometimes due to the flu, and then the lingering after-effects we feel because we never heal, rest or recover.  We beat down our immune system down with lack of sleep, bad nutrition, overworking and overstressing and then keep coming back to work and possibly infecting our teams.  My response to his thoughts:  "I should blog about this".  Clearly, I had it bad...even my diagnosis was a business story. 

That said, I held off, and now here I am discussing it.  Yes I'm currently mildly stuffy again and losing my voice, though I attribute this to part real cold/part spending Thanksgiving weekend around kids/and part due to the fact that rest continues to be at times a mirage....But I've vowed to fight the flu, and I encourage you to NOT do what I did and work until you don't listen to your body anymore....The irony is, we try to work through it and not miss any work and we come to work as less than a team player, we put other team members at risk, and we don't work to our fullest potential.  On top of THAT we prolong the illness!  Not good for business or your personal life.

I've now made a pact with myself to remember 3 things, and I encourage you to actually follow these words of advice, I promise they make more sense than my first system of "working through it":

Repeat after me:

I (state your name) do promise to:
 

• Remember that my health is more important than my job.  It impacts my performance, my clients, and my team.  I will value it more than any project or assignment on my desk. 

• Remember that lack of sleep leads to lack of health and lack of clarity.  It also leads to lack of people wanting to be around you because you are so darn crabby.

• Remember that as Sabina's mother (and her inspirational books) always says  "you can't strap a U-Haul to your hearse Sabina".  And you can't!  At the end of the day all that hard work means NOTHING if I can't live a healthy life that allows me to enjoy it with the ones I love, and the one that I love are are not things that I can plug in. 
   

Today's guest blogger, Anu Karwa, member and founder / CEO of Swirl Events, answers the question many of us wonder, while debating what to drink after a long day at the office/home office and dealing with the regular entrepreneurial day-to-day grind.  So sit back, pour a glass of wine, and check out what this wine expert has to say!

It's the end of the day, you've pitched your heart - and company- out non-stop, and all you can think about is putting your well-manicured heels on the coffee table and sitting back with a glass of wine.  But what's an entrepreneurial gal like yourself to drink?  Here are my favorite wine picking strategies that won't require a round of fundraising but taste as good as getting your product on Oprah. And if you thought this was helpful, send a little link love to my blog, SwirlSavvy.

1. Celebrate - you're worth it.  But try a Prosecco, a lightly sparkling wine from the Northeast corner of Italy, or a Cava, a sparkling wine from Spain made the traditional Champagne method.  Neither can be considered Champagne (since that only comes from the region of the same name in France) but it has all the festivity and bubbles as the more famous drink but at 1/5 of less of the price. My favorite is the Sorelle Bronca Prosecco made quarterly, to keep it fresh, by a duo of sisters in Veneto, Italy.

2.  Venture into the unknown - As an entrepreneur, you're willing to take a bit of a risk.  I recommend doing that with your wine choices as well.  Try lesser known regions and reap huge rewards.  A lesser known wine region that is taking the world by storm is Portugal.  The accolades are well-deserved.  Long known for Port, the dry red wines coming from the Douro, Dao and Alentejo taste they should cost 3X what you shelled out.   If you're a fan of Cabernet Sauvignon, try wines that include the Touriga Nacional grape for a similar taste.  Try the Esporao Reserve Red and be prepared for a wonderful evening.

3. In the same vein as Strategy #2, try lesser known grape varietals.  SwirlSavvy's loves wines with the Mencia grape, commonly found in wines from Bierzo in Spain.  It has all the complexity and spice Spanish reds are known for while revealing layer after layer of enticing aromas. Beyond it's gorgeous label, the Petalos from Bierzo, Spain will keep you coming back for more.

4. Don't pay the Chardonnay tax.  We're all so comfortable ordering a Chardonnay at a restaurant.  Owners know that and price accordingly.  Skip the extra cost and try a more food-friendly white wine like a Gruner Veltliner from Austria. Gruner Veltiner, aka GruVee or Gruner, is hard to pronounce but big on taste.  The crispness of granny smith apples is balanced by flinty minerality and a gorgeous nose.  The racy acidity makes it a perfect accompaniment to summer salads and grilled veggies.  Think of it as your picnic wine.