Guest blogger, Lindsey Paho, a writer at Professional Intern  is back for another visit.  This month her post focuses on the importance of a balance life for small business owners.

Keeping your personal life in balance while ensuring your business stays in the black can be tough. And small business owners have an especially difficult time maintaining a healthy balance because the demands of a small business can easily bleed over into personal life. The line between work and relaxation can be easily crossed, especially if you tend to work from home as well as the office.

Take a Break from Technology

Spending time in front of a computer can take up so much of your day that it’s easy to lose track of time. It’s not uncommon to turn off the computer in the office, only to fire up the laptop when you get home. Before you know it, the day is gone and when you weren’t working on your computer you were still glued to the screen checking emails and social media sites. Exerting the willpower to shut off your computer and step away from work when you need to can be tough. But if you make the effort to create some technology-free time you’ll find that it can add significant enrichment to your personal life.

Personal Time Matters

When you begin to let the demands of a small business encroach upon your time, one of the first areas that tend to be impacted is your exercise routine. Time spent in the gym, jogging or walking usually ends up getting sacrificed first when work takes priority over personal time. Stepping away from work to get some good exercise can help you stay in shape and feel better. You might be surprised at the positive impact of establishing an exercise routine can have on your productivity and creativity while working as well. And since exercise boosts endorphin levels in the brain you may find that it’s easier to maintain a positive attitude.

Rediscover Reading

When your personal life has to give way to the demands of your small business, finding the time to regularly read can be difficult. But if exercise is important for keeping your body in shape, reading frequently is a good workout for your brain. Making time for regular reading—even if it’s just during your lunch break—is a good way to stay informed and engaged with new ideas. And it doesn’t have to be Tolstoy novels either. Keeping several business and entrepreneur-themed magazines handy can make for a great way to take a break and gain insights that can have a direct positive impact on your business.

Take a Class

Even if you don’t have an interest in continuing your education or pursuing a degree program, take a class in a subject that intrigues you. Personal time doesn’t mean that you have to be passive. And don’t think that it has to be a business class either. If you have a passion for history, enroll in a history class. If you’ve always been fascinated with how different societies produce distinct cultures, enroll in a cultural anthropology class. Lifelong learning is uniquely enriching and ensures that you’re a well-rounded person. But regardless of what you do with your personal time, just make sure that you don’t let the work of running a small business dominate your life.

Lindsey Paho lives near Chicago. She divides her time among work, writing and family life. She writes on behalf of Colorado Technical Universityand has a keen interest in small business blogging and social media. She also writes for www.professionalintern.com.

You’re busily at work on a huge project. You have an end of day deadline, but you know you can make it: everything’s going perfectly.

Then the phone rings, or you make that fatal mistake of checking your email, and your world comes crashing down. Another client or another boss needs their project done now. So now it’s crunch time. Someone has to win, and someone has to lose.

This is something that’s incredibly hard for me to deal with. I’m not one of those people who loves the wooshing sound deadlines make as they fly by.  I want things to be there on time, and I want to be responsive to customers when they call needing something STAT. What’s a girl to do?

Currently, I attempt to frantically get everything done within the old and the new deadlines. Unfortunately, this usually results in one of two things: Long hours and a stressed Allison, or quickly done work that isn’t up to my usual standards, which leads to unhappy customers in the long run.

So I’m working on being more firm with the last minute deadlines that pop up. Sure, there will always be little emergencies that can (and should) be dealt with. But if something can genuinely wait, I’m working on this phrase: “I’m working on a tight deadline today, but I can have that for you by (tomorrow, next week).” That’s it. A simple little phrase that gets people to slow down, realize that just like them, we’re juggling multiple priorities and doing our best.

Setting priorities and deadlines should be an important part of a small business strategy.  How do you deal with people who demand your attention right this second? What’s your strategy for dealing?

When you set up on a long trip to an unfamiliar location, you need a map. The same is true for your business.  Discover the most common mistakes business owners make as the develop their business plan, and how to avoid them

Want to join us? Click here to find out when the next session will be held!

I’ve had a real job for about 18 months, but I’ve never taken a real vacation. Sure, I had a couple days at Christmas and a few days for some minor surgery, but nothing lasting even a week. Until June 6, when I took two weeks off.

For many people, taking two weeks away from their job is unthinkable. For someone at a small business, it’s even harder. I asked Lorraine for permission a year ago to take my dream trip to Egypt, a belated graduation gift. I wouldn’t just be out of the office–I would in all likelihood be without Internet access at all, and certainly without phone access. It was a daunting prospect for me, and probably an even bigger one for my boss. But we all survived. How can you take a vacation without causing office chaos?

Small Business Owners Can Take Vacations

• Plan Early: As I mentioned, I gave Lorraine a year’s notice. That might be a little extreme, but the more notice you can give everyone, the better. It gave everyone time to get used to the idea that a member of the team would be out of action, and let us plan accordingly.
• Make It Manageable: I started working on materials for my absence about two months before I actually left. How is this possible? I knew what my baseline work was, what was owed to retainer clients, and what I could plan for. So every week, I wrote an extra blog post or two to hold in reserve, saved a few more tweets to be scheduled. That way, I wasn’t scrambling in the week before I left to finish two weeks of work.
• Get People in Place: I know that I can always count on Lorraine, Jay, Rebecca, and the rest of the Roundpeg team, but when it came to choosing my intern this summer, I knew that who I chose would be extra important, as she’d be helping with tasks that arose while I was out. So I took my time, and made sure that I found a quality candidate in Melissa. She did a great job.
• Let Clients Know: For about a month before I left, I started planting the seeds with my clients that I would be gone. A week before, I sent them an email explaining my absence and telling them the best person to contact with their concerns while I was gone. This way, there were no nasty surprises when a client realized I was gone, and the transition was smooth for them.
• Let Go: We all like to think that we’re irreplaceable, that our workplaces couldn’t function without us for a week or two. Guess what? They can. Sure, they’ll miss you, but with the proper planning and preparation, you can go on an incommunicado vacation knowing that things will chug along without you–and not return to a terrible pile of work on your return.

How do you plan for your vacations?

One of my personal goals this year is to increase the amount of new business I bring to Roundpeg. I know that my chances of success grow the more I set  solid, achievable goals. I didn’t want to just “give it a shot” and hope for the best. Luckily, I have a plan. To accomplish my goals, I’m going to use…a cookbook.

Now this might sound a little odd at first, but hear me out. In order to make good food, it helps if you follow a recipe, which outlines the ingredients and the steps to prepare the dish.  If you follow the recipe and use the right ingredients, you increase the chances you’ll get what you expect. I see business success in the same way. By following a “recipe” (make this many calls a day, schedule this many appointments a week, etc.) I don’t have to focus solely on the results.  Just like in the kitchen, the results will come. I just HAVE to stick to the recipe.

I’m using a “cookbook” and documenting my progress for another reason: accountability. In our business, things move at breakneck speed. With a constantly changing environment, it’s easy to let sales and marketing efforts fall by the wayside. Having a cookbook sitting right on top of my desk forces me to hold myself accountable for meeting my goals every day.

I’m using a cookbook to meet my goals in 2011. What are you using?

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And if you missed my seminar with Nick Carter last week, here is just a taste of what you could have learned. Hope you will join me next time.

On the last working day of the 2010 year, the entire Roundpeg crew took time out to  discuss where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. The company has grown over the past year, and we have several  exciting projects planned for 2011.

The end of year meeting was a time when we could all set company and personal goals, and challenge each other to grow and learn.  Quite often, it’s easy to get so overwhelmed with work you forget to step back and analyze the bigger picture. Are you still on the path to where you want to be? If not, what changes to you need to make?

Personally, I’m looking forward to teaching more seminars like Forget Henry Ford in the next twelve months. I’m also excited to work with our clients on more strategic, big picture projects.

2011 should be an even better year here than 2010. What would you like to achieve in the next twelve months, and how do you plan to get there?

As the new year begins, take a few minuets to visualize what the year will be like.  Think about your business and personal goals and imagine where you want to be a year from now.  Think about what you want to achieve.

Now that you have a picture firmly in your mind, write yourself a letter as if it was December 31, 2011.  Imagine you had achieved everything you envisioned. Write about what you did, and how you feel about your accomplishments. Seal the letter with confidence, give it to a friend and ask him/her to mail it to you at the end of the year.

I have done this a few times, and as the end of the year approaches, I look forward to receiving my letter, and seeing how closely I came to making my vision come true.   I enjoy seeing the elements I have accomplished, and find myself re energized to work on those things which did not happen.

So take a few minutes today and write yourself a letter.  You will be glad you did!

Last weekend, most of the Roundpeg team participated in Indianapolis’s third Start-Up Weekend. The goal of the weekend was for teams tor go from concept to business launch within the 54 hour event.  At the end of the weekend, each team presented their new venture to a board of judges, with the winning team moving on to a global start-up competition.

More than anything, I feel like the weekend was a learning experience. A few of the lessons I took away from Start-Up Weekend:

1. Passion is infectious – The best part of Start-Up Weekend was how excited participants became about their projects. By the end of the first night, seven teams fully believed they were on the verge of founding the next mega-corporation. That belief created a buzz in the air that was impossible to ignore. And that same fervor drove everyone in the building to work and push to create the best product possible.

2. Roadblocks are inevitable – I work with business owners all the time. Until Start-Up Weekend, though, I couldn’t empathize with business owners. I had never experienced the trials and tribulations of starting a business from scratch. Several times during the weekend we hit major roadblocks in development. For example, different “departments” work at different paces. In a startup, everyone is so close that it’s much more obvious when there’s a gap between those department production cycles. For our team, those roadblocks forced us to step back, regroup, and push forward once more to overcome obstacles.

3. The idea is paramount – At the end of the weekend, each team had only five minutes to present the case for its business. Five minutes is NOT very long.  There isn’t time to talk  in-depth about the financial projections. While the judges did appreciate teams briefly touching on financial projections, their final grades placed the most emphasis on the idea. If you have brilliant idea, always lead with that.

4. Show, don’t tell – This was some of the best advice I received over the weekend, when it comes to selling a business, it’s always better to show rather than tell. The most impressive presentations the final night were the demonstrations of working prototypes. This is really just an extension of the concept of “actions speak louder than words.”

These are just a few of the lessons I learned from attending from Start-Up Weekend. Have you ever attended a Start-Up Weekend? What did you learn? If you didn’t make it to this one, be sure to attend the next one in April 2011!

(And be sure to vote for Indy’s winning team:  StatsSquared in the Global Startup Battle.

I know when I started this series two weeks ago, I promised the Ten Mistakes Small Business Owners Make. But if you jumped to the original article, you know there are really 11 items on my list.  This final element is probably the most crucial for your success.

Business Plan Mistake # 11 Failure to Communicate

While not directly a part of your document, poor communication can have a detrimental affect on your business. As you write your plan, involve anyone who could be affected by the plan.

Seek advice from people you respect. Talk to employees, family members, business partners, and advisors, such as your accountant and lawyer. Ask their opinions and communicate your goals. It is easier to steer a boat if everyone is rowing in the same direction.

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If  you have enjoyed this series of posts on business planning and would like to explore the topic in more detail consider taking me up on one or two of the following FREE offers.

• Join me for a FREE  overview of  business planning on March 10 at 8:30 at the offices of Trustpointe – 6666 E. 75th Street, Suite 150, Indianapolis, IN 46250.  In this lively ninety minute workshop, participants will learn the elements of a good business plan, as well as tips and strategies on how to get started, and make planning an integral part of your business operation.  There is no fee to attend, but reservations are required.
• And as an added bonus when you register, you are enrolled in the free eCourse: How to Write a Business Plan in 10 Weeks

To take advantage of one or both of the FREE offers simply fill out the form below.