As I write this, I can not believe it’s April 15th – I’d like to know what happened to the first half of my month.

Do you ever wish you could pause everything happening around you so that you could get everything done in a day that you wanted to?

I wish I had a pause button, I’ll tell you that much.

On Wednesday night (one loooong week ago) an unwanted stomach virus made it’s way into our home through our eldest daughter. This normally would be a bad thing, of course it would, but this was bad timing at it’s very best…or worst. I’ve just started working hard with a personal trainer at 6:30 every morning, am still dealing with a toddler that won’t sleep through the night, have a home freshly listed on the real estate market which needed a deep spring cleaning for its first showing, had two Easter dinners (we had to skip out on) and…what am I forgetting?….oh yes. That thriving business I’m running!

The flu quickly spread to my husband and then our youngest daughter and it did not leave until yesterday. What a wild week! I have to say, I have no idea how parents who work outside of the home deal with these situations when they arise. I feel very lucky to be a freelancer at a time like this because my schedule is so flexible. However, I was totally thrown for a loop when all this started happening.

I’d planned to take a long weekend away from my work but having lost a significant amount of time thanks to the flu a couple days before my break, I lost a lot of ground.

I’ve read tons of articles and blog posts, books and whatnot about contingency planning and having a back up in place for when disaster strikes and I do have a plan. Sort of.

I know what to do if I lose my power, get sick or have a *eek* hard drive crash. But nowhere in my list of procedures do I have a plan for what to do when the arse goes right out from under my life for a week.

Luckily I have amazing clients and even though I had to miss a couple of deadlines they were understanding and nothing caught fire or anything because I was late.

There’s one thing that saved me, having to be away from my work for so many days at a time without planning to, and that’s the buffer I build into the time estimates I give for projects.

I used to be a “I’ll have it done for you on Friday” kind of person and I said that to everyone. But the problem was, I would literally have a dozen things to have done each Friday and by the time Thursday would come around I’d be going nuts trying to get caught up.

The thing is, it’s not smooth sailing in my life 24/7. When you’re a working parent, whether you work from home or outside in the “corporate world”, things are never going to go according to plan ALL the time.

I am so happy that I saw the light a few months back and started giving more reasonable time lines for project completion because…well…you just never know.

If you’re a service provider constantly overextending yourself, I hope you’ll be able to take something away from this.

Give yourself some breathing room – build in a buffer because sometimes life just gets in the way.

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A few weeks ago, my husband and I started working with a service provider I won’t mention, but I will mention the relationship ended a few days ago.

Every time I called this person, I heard about how busy they were and at the same time, it felt like there was always confusion about our file and it kept being pushed aside. It almost felt like we were an annoyance more than a client and I’m sure that wasn’t the intention. But when you’re always telling your clients about how busy you are, and then can’t remember details about them, well you should consider how that looks.

As another example of this, I was just chatting on Skype with my awesome friend and client, Sally Kuhlman. Sally’s excited about a new endeavor, but she mentioned she was having trouble with a vendor she hired. She said she had to track this business owner down because of a lack of communication, and when she finally reached her, was told she was really busy and it would be another couple weeks before she could get the job done.

Sally said she felt like this person was doing her a favor instead of providing a service she was paid for.

I’m busy – most of us are. But I sure don’t make a habit of telling my clients every time I talk to them (if ever) how busy I am…unless they ask if I’m busy. I don’t lie about it, but I don’t feel it’s appropriate to always be telling my valued clients that I’m swamped.

Now, my husband and I have decided to sell our home and this morning our real estate agent came by to measure our house. He’s probably one of the busiest agents on PEI, but I’d never know it if I didn’t know the local market and industry so well. Even though I know this guy’s beyond busy, he always has time to chat with me on the phone. When he’s meeting with us, he ignores his telephone or profusely apologizes if he needs to take a call. He basically just makes us feel like we’re important. If I make mention of how busy he must be, he tells me stories about just how busy he is and that’s fine. He’s doing his job and it really feels like he is providing a service and taking pride in that.

You know what happens now, don’t you? My husband and I will be telling everyone we know about how great an agent Ian Walker is which will hopefully lead to lots of referral business for him.

The other service providers I mentioned that we Manns and Sally worked with…well…they probably won’t get many referrals from us.

You really have to treat your clients and customers like they’re the only person that matters while you’re interacting with them. That’s how you become successful.

I’m sure you have a story or two about a time you were made to feel like you were being a pain to someone you were paying money to. I’d love to hear about it!

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This morning at 6:30am instead of pecking away at my computer or sleeping which is what I’m normally doing at that time, I was at the gym doing many squats, hammer curls and painful things with a medicine ball.

As I was getting in position to do my first set of dumbbell rows, my trainer mentioned how the exercise would work my back and my abs which I thought was funny since I’m pretty sure I don’t have abs anymore.

She assured me that I still do, and that they’re just hiding there behind some fat just like everyone elses. She said, “It’s up to us to determine how much fat stays in front of our abs.” (That’s exactly what I was doing at the gym this morning doing a boot camp style workout – I’ve determined that I want to see more of those muscles.)

While I was driving home, I kept thinking back to what my trainer said. It’s true that for the most part, our skeletons are all basically the same – bones covered with the tissues and muscles and stuff. It’s how an individual maintains their body that determines how much junk gets stored in the trunk.

Then (because I think in blog posts) I realized that most of our businesses probably have some “fat in front of their abs” if you will. Something that’s built up gradually and is slowing down how efficiently we work.

My business just lost an entire belly roll after I moved from hourly pricing to charging a flat rate per project. I love this model because:

a) my clients know exactly what they’ll pay – no surprises if I go ‘over’ because I won’t. It’s a flat rate.

b) I don’t feel like I should be billing for time I spend playing with my kids.

c) I don’t have heart palpitations if I can only bill for a couple hours on a hectic day.

As I continue to define my ideal client, my business’ metabolism improves because I’m doing work I love for people I love working with. When I’m working on projects I don’t enjoy, I can almost feel my business running more sluggishly.

These are just a couple of examples but the truth is, I think sometimes we get lazy with our businesses, just like we do with our healthy eating and fitness goals.

When something’s not working in your business and you continue to let it go without doing anything about it, it’s kind of like stuffing your face with potato chips every night and wondering why you keep getting flabbier.

My copywriting business is so new, it hasn’t had time to develop a gut yet, but we’re not at abs of steel status just yet. That will come with a consistent effort, just like if I keep meeting with that evil trainer woman every morning I will see results and God willing, I’ll live longer and better for the effort.

How about you? How’s your business’ gut?

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Yes, in case you’re wondering, I have noticed a theme in my posts of late. Seems as though I’ve been talking “dirty” for a week now, but I can’t help it. I’m not the type of blogger who can write posts ahead of time, I’m a spontaneous girl and it’s just kind of a coincidence that these entries share a common theme.

Anyway…

I drove to the local convenience store today to get some milk. The smell when I walked in…well…if you live in a rural area and are used to the smell of horses and other farm fresh aromas…well you know what I was smelling. It happened to be a very busy day at Clow’s Red & White (Bobby Clow’s to pretty much everyone on PEI) and I had the pleasure of waiting behind some hungry farm workers lined up for hot soup.

When I was next in line, one of the men said to the woman behind the counter, “You’re gonna have to mop the floor after we leave!” (It really was pretty dirty.)

The clerk rang in the gentleman’s lunch, smiled and said, “Bobby used to say he loves having a dirty floor because that means there are people in the store!”

I smiled at a memory of Bobby and could see him saying such a thing. It reminded me of when my mother says she never minds doing dishes because that means we ate another meal.

The kind of attitude shared by Bobby and my mother is the kind of attitude I think we should all have – in business and in life. Instead of looking at something as an inconvenience or a nuisance, try to find the blessing.

I’m going to try not to complain about my millions of emails because that means people are getting in touch with me.

I’ll try (really hard) not to gripe about the time I have to spend invoicing because that means I have paying clients.

I’m going to try not to swear under my breath when I step in a sticky puddle of apple juice or smoosh a graham cracker under my barefoot because that means I have beautiful children here with me and can afford to buy snacks for them.

I could go on all day with this, but I want to hear from you. What’s your dirty floor? Do you have a “pain” that you can turn around into a blessing?

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When I was in high school I ate packaged diet brownies – I wish I could remember the brand – but they were individually packaged in cellophane. They were kind of chewy and dense and they filled the brownie urge without too many calories being taken in. As far as a diet brownie went, though, they were good.

When I was in college and wanted a brownie but was a) too broke to splurge on real butter and cocoa and b) hadn’t yet become a great chef (hee hee), I would prepare those brownie mixes that come with a tin foil packet of icing. They were kind of gross, but were definitely brownie-esque and would do in a pinch.

At my bridal shower, I was given a 9″x13″ pan by a neighbor of my mother’s along with a bunch of her own family recipes that could be made in that pan. One of them was a recipe for “Fantastic Brownies”. The gift-giver advised that they were best made with quality ingredients, love and care.

Now that I’m a married and have a husband and children who love anything chocolate above most everything else, I prefer to bake brownies from that recipe because of the quality of the finished product and the fact that I know exactly what is going into them.

When I want a good brownie (like the ones pictured above that I baked yesterday), I use real butter, real vanilla and even though from start to finish they take an hour to make they’re superb and there really is no substitute.

Professional service providers are like brownies. There are the cheap ones who work fast and will do in a pinch, sort of like the brownies you find hanging next to the peanuts at the counter of a convenience store. Then there are the service providers who are more costly, but deliver a delicious, made-with-real-vanilla-fudgy-brownie kind of result.

Once you’ve eaten a homemade brownie it’s really hard to go back to any other kind.

When you start investing in homemade brownie type service providers, you’ll see the difference and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

What type of brownie do you tend to reach for and why? What type of brownie are you?

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