It’s easy to come up with a to-do list for worthy efforts to improve your business. In a nutshell, the top five priorities in most creative businesses would be: Create stock, Update shops, Keep up on social media, Work on new designs and Promote business.

Sometimes I do pretty good on these priorities. Often I don’t. There are two categories of things that displace the list above- tangents, and higher priorities. Tangents are things that I shouldn’t be doing until I’ve addressed the top five priorities listed above. In this post from April, at least half of the things that I wanted to get around to were outside of that list! The second category- higher priorities- have nothing to do with business per se. They include things like:

• Take kids to the playground.
• Do the dishes, or otherwise help out around the house. (Note to self: Husband is beginning to look frazzled.)
• Food shopping.
• Go to the beach with the family.
• Make healthy, nourishing meals.
• Go for walks.
• Date night.
• Spend time with friends.

It wouldn’t be very conducive to growing a business if these things were all I did, but it’s worth bringing up because it’s easy- too easy- to get wrapped up in “growing a business” and missing the things that you’re growing a business for. In my case, I wanted to start Home Sweet to help support my family while working around my older son’s schedule, to be home when he returned from school. In the past three years, there have been lots of times when he asked for my attention, and I had to tell him I was busy working. There have been other times when I put off finishing an order (or, more often, writing a blog post) because I took the kids to the library or something.

There’s no one thing that must always come first. Day-to-day priorities shift, but by grace, and with the help of my husband (who is ironing table linens right now), we keep everything moving in the right direction.

Eli's table in the studio

It’s been about three years since I began Home Sweet.

I had the idea to start a business when my older son was two years old, and I realized that I wanted to be there for him when he got home from school. I couldn’t just leave my full time job- our household budget didn’t require me to make my full salary, but it did require me to make more than nothing. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved all things DIY and fabric-related, so a block printing business was kind of a natural match for me.

In these past three years, I’ve continued working a full time job. We also had another baby, and took on some home renovation projects. At the same time, I’ve slowly built Home Sweet to the point where my husband and I were comfortable with it being a primary source of income. This journey hasn’t been a straight line from A to B! There have been lots of ups and downs, and lots of conversations about what we were trying to accomplish and if we were going about it the right way.

And now, here we are! My older son started kindergarten this year, and I’m transitioning from working a full-time job and running Home Sweet part time to the other way around. It occurred to me that we’ve learned a lot of lessons about the work/life balance (or in my case, work/work/life balance!) that are helpful if you’re someone who’s trying to build a business. When I sat down and jotted some of these topics down, I came up with twelve distinct lessons! Twelve! If I write one post every week about each of these topics, that’s three months worth of posts…

So here we go. I started a new category for the blog called “Work/Life Balance”, and I’ll try to add a post on the topic every Wednesday.This week, I’ll start with the most basic question there is: Why are you in business?

Is it because you want the flexibility to work around your family’s schedule? Is it because you want a little extra money, or would like to fund your craft addiction? Is it because you hate your current job, and it seems like everyone has a successful Etsy shop?

You’d better know the reason, because if you’ve read any of the advice out there about starting a business, then you know that it’s hard, hard work. Having clarity about why you’re in business in the first place can be a great motivating factor when things get tough, or a great reminder that you’re getting in over your head when all you wanted was a little extra money. Every other decision that you make regarding your business starts with this decision at the top, whether it’s deciding how much to invest in supplies and equipment, whether or not to start your own website, or how much time to put into blogging and social media.

There’s a ton of fabulous advice out there, but it may not all be meant for you. Being able to answer this basic question- and believe me, there are a lot of people who can’t- will enable you to discern what you need to make your business match that purpose.