As a wedding planner, I’m supposed to have all the answers. As a boss, I’m supposed to always be organized and on top of things. As a wife, I’m supposed to maintain a clean household and be attentive to my husband and family.
Do you know what I’m naturally good at? Passion projects. I think of things that haven’t been created before I put everything I have into those things. The natural day-to-day mundane details? That’s not my strength. If it is something that needs to be accomplished on a regular basis – I need to outsource it.
When I began working from home, I had this constant sense of anxiety over the fact that I couldn’t clean the house, cook dinner, and still get done all that was on my to do list. There would be days that I could do one or the other, but I just couldn’t do both. I soon realized that if there was something I didn’t like to do (like clean), it could take me the whole day to accomplish even the smallest tasks. If it was something I was passionate about however, I could knock out a business model in a matter of hours.
“Creative” is a term that I’ve almost rejected in my life leading up to now, because I’ve always associated it with someone who is disorganized, unprofessional, and unprepared. Someone who flies by the seat of their pants, and hopes for the best-- and that’s simply not me. I am someone who is a dreamer, but I have this instant need to implement a new idea as soon as I think of it. I am constantly thinking of how I can improve and grow, and as soon as I develop a new concept I want to workshop the idea immediately.
I don’t like to keep things on my five year plan if they could be moved up to my 2 year plan. I would much rather accomplish my five-year plan in two years, and then continue planning for the future. I thrive on accomplishing things before the deadline, and then seeing what else I can do to fill that extra time I’ve created for myself.
Oftentimes, this is why I have a dozen projects going on at once. I remember the first time we had 3 weddings scheduled in a weekend-- I was completely overwhelmed. But we worked through it, stayed as organized as possible, and were constantly making notes on how we could improve. The next time we had 3 weddings scheduled, the team handled it without any problems, because we had already workshopped how to be better, and were more equipped for the next time. Now that was something that we could do, and replicate, so it was time for a new challenge.
I don’t know why my brain works this way – but it does. Owning a business teaches you a lot about yourself. It teaches you that you’re really good at somethings, and really bad at others. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last three years, is that there are a lot of things that I am bad at. For the things that I am bad at, I’ve learned to hire people who are great at them, and focus instead on how I can best serve our clients.
When I think back to our couples who used to rely on me to get all of their paperwork emailed to them on time and answer all of their questions as soon as they hit the inbox, I just want to go back and hug them for being so patient with me-- because that is NOT where I shine.
Now, our administrative assistant can tackle projects and answer questions for clients minutes after I ask her to, which makes the client experience so much better than it ever was when I was doing it on my own. Now we have online invoicing, a newsletter, client gifts, and all of these other amazing resources that I wanted to create but never had the patience.
Admittedly, I still don’t cook and clean. We eat out more than we should and I’m fairly certain that if our cleaning lady quit I would cry for days. But fortunately, that hasn’t happened yet (knock on wood), so for now, I will continue chasing my passions and outsourcing in places where I don’t excel.