I Don't Sleep, I Dream

Startup Sunday

President and CEO.

My friend put the words beneath my name on the business card she prepared to order for me.

I told her to change the title. It was absurd. I wasn’t a CEO, and president of what?

I started a Web site, an online directory in the Washington, DC area. A simple idea, created to fill a void in my community. It was a massive undertaking carried out in spare time I thought I lacked but somehow manifested between a full-time job with irregular hours and two young children, also with irregular hours.

But I really wasn’t a chief executive, I insisted, or a company president. My so-called business was made of one – two if you counted my husband, who I mainly considered a silent partner, since it was also his money that helped pay the Web developers creating and tweaking the site.

That night, as I looked at my future business cards, I had my first full realization that I had become an entrepreneur. I’m still uncomfortable with the term, but the fantasy of being someone who successfully balanced a full-time job and a rambunctious family, while creating a Web-based empire, helped me accept the image.

The key word there is balance. Isn’t it always?

Today, my former job with the unpredictable hours is gone, replaced by work that offers a more regular schedule, but a longer commute. Still, the change brought a welcome stability and eliminated late-night and weekend calls to work.

And then there are the kids. Spending time with them trumps everything else in my life. During the week, camp counselors and daycare providers spend more time with them than I do. It’s crucial that my husband and I get nearly every other waking moment they have.

Balancing work and family is a struggle many moms constantly battle. It becomes a downright juggling act once you add the tribulations of starting up a business.

I started my Web site because I felt a need for it. The idea emerged from my frustrating attempts to find certain Asian-owned and Asian-themed businesses. Asians are the second largest minority group in the Washington DC area. They’re also a decentralized bunch, with resources usually geared to specific ethnic groups, often in native languages. I created my Web site to be a central directory. It continues to be the only place to find commercial, social, cultural, religious and charitable resources for the entire Asian community in the region.

I know my community. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to run a business. I find myself playing this by ear. Business plan? I’ve got 5 paragraphs of one. Start-up capital? Spent it on the Web developers.

My promotional strategy is hodgepodge, and I spend more time on social media marketing than I thought I would. I reprimand myself too often for spending more time Tweeting than on what I should consider a top priority – building up my Web site’s business database, i.e. data entry.

I rarely go to bed before 1 a.m. these days. Building up my business increasingly consumes my free time. While it becomes a larger part of my life, it frustrates me because I never have enough time to make it grow. I dream about it becoming a full-time, money-making operation, but that day seems distant. Being a mom and my day job – my salaried day job – come first.

So I compensate by conducting Web site business during lunch breaks and after 9 p.m. bedtimes, and many weekend hours. That's not to say I haven't found ways to sneak it into my schedule during other moments. I grind away at it because, without me even realizing it, the Web site has become my passion.

And it’s nice to feel this passionate about work again.

Comments

[Reno Lovison]

When people as me why I wrote "Turn Your Business Card Into Business" I tell them it is because when working with small business owners about their marketing plan or materials they are most animated and excited when talking abut their business card. It has the power to extrapolate your dreams and project them on to a 2.5 x 3 inch piece of paper. You have confirmed this.

[krisshan kant sundriyal]

Linda Goodman writes in Star Signs that by using Pran Yantra or Tesla Purple Energy Plates, the problem of Irregular Sleeping Hours vanishes.Even a 4 hour sleep will make you as energised as if you have had a full 8 hours sleep. Simply keep the purple plate beneath your pillow.These plates are developed using universal free energy somewhere in the Himalayan region of India.
Infact these are multiutilities plates & can be used in a hundred ways