I wrote this as a guest post for a friend's blog back in 2017. A few things have changed, but in general I still feel the same now as I did then about the pros and cons of growing my business...I thought it worth sharing here.
I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this topic.
My name is Rebecca and I live on a hill country sheep and beef farm in a wee place on the East Coast of the North Island called Pongaroa. I love writing, talking (perhaps a little too much), trying to grow my own veges and galloping around the countryside on my pony in winter – tally ho!
I started out as a reporter on daily newspapers where I developed my news obsession and learned how to write on deadline. I’ve covered council, education, court, murders, the Olympics and even did a stint in the press gallery and covered the 2011 election. But what I really love to write about is farming and ponies.
I decided to focus on agriculture and worked my way up to a pretty great job as editor of a weekly farming newspaper called The New Zealand Farmers Weekly. Getting to this position felt like a huge accomplishment and that years of being career focused (read: work was pretty much my entire life) had paid off.
Then three years ago I decided to resign from my dream job, move to a remote farm to be with my now husband, and start my own freelance journalism/PR business.
Initially my main concern was – will I have enough work?! How will I pay for my horses (because I’m definitely not telling my husband how much I spend on them)? It was a huge leap of faith but it was 100% worth it. I am my own boss, I can be flexible with my hours and help Richard on the farm when he needs me. If I wake up and the sun is shining, I ride my horse and work later in the evening. I also like that the more I work, the more I earn. And it turned out that getting enough work was no problem.
However, the worry about not enough work soon turned into a completely different conundrum…I have so much work I can’t possibly do it all without running myself into the ground. To grow my business or not to grow?
Being a one-man band is hard. There is no such thing as a public holiday, no annual leave and you can forget about taking sick days. Income can be erratic and there’s no guarantee the work will keep flowing. But the benefits completely outweigh the negatives.
I went from working ridiculous hours and high stress levels to having a great work/life balance, and it made me so much happier.
If only I could clone myself.
I have a real problem with saying no to anyone – in work or personal life – and if I wanted to keep saying ‘yes’ to work, I would need to employ staff or, at the very least, someone to do all the niggly admin stuff.
I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I feel that my name and reputation and my business are very closely linked. I have a very close relationship with all of my clients and I was unsure how I would introduce the idea of someone else doing their work. Not to mention the fact that, due to my location, the other person would be likely to have to work remotely also, and would need to have both a writing and agricultural background.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised I was actually quite happy with where I was at. Would growing my business make me happier or more satisfied? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-growth, but I decided that bigger would not necessarily be better, for me. I like my little business, it meets my needs, it keeps me busy and I get to do what I love every.single.day.
It did mean that I had to learn to say NO to work, which was hard, and also not to be available to clients within unrealistic timeframes (e.g I need this press release done this morning even though I’ve given you zero warning and know you are shearing today). But I see this as a good thing. 1. I had to have a cull, but it means I am flexible and provides the opportunity to be nimble and cherry pick the projects I really want to work on/people I want to work with. 2. People actually value you and your service more when you say NO sometimes. I generally will do my best to work with my clients and meet their deadlines, if it means working all night, no worries. But sometimes it’s just not possible and I have to say no. It doesn’t stop me feeling bad, but I’m getting better at it.
I’d love to hear other people’s advice on growing their business – how did you decide it was time to employ people? How did you deal with letting go and bring new people on board?
Comments