Balancing business and personal life can be tricky, especially for black businesswomen leading startups. Still, it’s possible to do more than balance those two aspects of life, it’s possible to thrive in both. How? By intertwining skills needed in business and life. Women who have rich personal lives are usually more successful in business. Now you’ll see why.
How You Build Boundaries for Your Personal and Work Life
How many times have you heard someone complaining they can’t find the balance between work and life? That happens when someone wants too much from both but doesn’t know how to manage their time (more about that in the next paragraph). Now we’ll reveal a little trick many black businesswomen and men use every day to stay sane.
A businesswoman can’t afford to go on dates with people who aren’t her matches. That would be wasting the most valuable resource in business – time. That’s why black women and men use an advanced matchmaking feature on a specialized dating site Iwantblacks called the “Like Gallery.” It presents their matches and makes it easy to connect without wasting time. It’s possible to chat with an unlimited number of singles and date only those who prove to be compatible.
Your Communication Skills and Connections
Communication skills you learn in your personal life are very helpful in business. Reading non-verbal communication can make a difference between making a deal and wasting an opportunity. Knowing when to listen and when to speak gets friends and lovers in personal life and leads to closing the deals in the business. Relationships, both personal and professional, are like dancing. One has to know when to lead and when to follow.
Communication skills are very valuable, but connections in personal life are even more important. Maybe you have a friend from high school who can help you with your startup. Maybe you know someone who can introduce you to investors. You never know who can be useful when it comes to business; that’s why networking is so valuable. Make connections and use them wisely.
How Can You Manage Your Time
All the skills and connections in the world aren’t worth anything if you don’t know how to manage your time. Without time-management skills, you won’t be able to find a balance between life and work. You’ll feel overwhelmed, tired, and nervous all the time because of the tasks you didn’t finish or the appointments you missed.
The key to managing time and being more productive is making a schedule. At the end of the working day, write down everything you plan to do tomorrow. Be careful to set realistic goals. Otherwise, the schedule won’t help you; it will just remind you that you failed.
How you Manage Your Personal Finances
Many startup owners, black women included, fall into the trap of spending too much too soon. When a startup starts growing and producing money, people tend to relax because it seems like the money will keep coming forever.
Instead of trying to show everybody you succeed, keep it low. Treat yourself, but know when to stop. Wasting all the income will destroy your startup and your finances because you’ll go bankrupt sooner than you think. The best option is to determine the budget for the next couple of months and stick to it.
Your Image of Potential Partners May Change
As a startup grows, ambitions grow too. Not just in business, in life too. You may notice you are attracted to different kinds of people. More successful, more ambitious. By leading a startup, you’ll evolve, so you’ll probably want someone who can keep pace with you.
Being a black businesswoman who leads a startup is a challenge, but you aren’t one of those who back up from the challenge. To help you deal with everything coming your way, we gave some tips on using skills from personal life in business.
