Working for yourself can be amazing – the flexibility to make your working day your own, the ability to fit your work around your life and not your life around your work, making money for your own pocket so that you can fulfill a holiday of a lifetime or buying your dream home.
But then…there’s the negative side. You’re responsible for ALL THE THINGS. You have to make ALL THE DECISIONS. You end up working more than you did in your 9-5 employed job. You land at your work space on a Monday morning but you have nobody to share what you did over the weekend or talk about the amazing restaurant you ate out at on Saturday night or the film you saw.
Working in isolation can be tough. There’s nobody around to motivate you and likewise there’s nobody around to talk about the difficult times. You might have just had the most amazing call with a potential new client or supplier but there’s nobody around to celebrate with.
Whilst working on your own sounds amazing it can have it downsides. You don’t miss the office politics or gossip but you do miss human interaction on a daily basis. When your partner gets home, you explode with verbal diarrhea simply because they are the first person you might have spoken to all day.
This is why we strongly believe you need to find your tribe / your support gang / your fellow small business owners.
You need to find yourself a group of people that really understand you. It might be your partner, family or friends but from experience, they might not run their own businesses so may not fully understand the trials and tribulations you face on a weekly basis.
Never under estimate the power of your tribe
The ultimate key to your tribe is that they need to be people who will support, encourage and help you.
These folk will act as your sounding board when you’re wondering whether to launch a new product or service. They’ll listen to you when you’ve had a difficult conversation with someone. They’ll shout about your wins and celebrate with you. They’ll recommend you to other business owners who are looking for your service or your product. When it all gets really busy over a particular season such as Christmas, they’ll tell you to slow down, get a coffee and take a break.
Everyone needs a guiding hand or some moral support whether you’ve been in business 6 months or 6 years.
Find your tribe doesn’t have to be a group of people in the same industry as you. Sometimes someone not in your industry can give you a different perspective on things.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve got some amazing fellow VA’s that we can call upon and are in a Mastermind group specifically for VA’s. We’ve met some amazing people through Instagram that we now class as friends.
What’s stopping you from finding your tribe? How could you benefit from that group of people that are willing to give you the support and guidance that you need?
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