The road to entrepreneurship starts out pretty bumpy; filled with winding paths of trial and error. As a small company, my biggest obstacle has been clocking out. I live and breathe animals. I wake and go to bed with them. How lucky am I? As incredibly rewarding as working with pets is, I was working days, evenings and weekends. This meant a sacrifice in my social life.  I realized I was not taking any breaks and really missed having personal and vacation days. There were moments where I contemplated throwing the baby out with the bath water.  How nice would it be to work for someone else again, take vacation and travel if only for two weeks a year? All I’d have to do is end my company. After all, it had been 4 years since I last went on vacation.

Recently, I took a step outside of my world and realized I needed to make time for myself. That it was okay to clock out after 7pm and occasionally go away for a weekend.  I even took the 4th of July weekend off this year and, (sit down for this) have announced a whopping two weeks off in September. I’ll admit, I was not fully comfortable with the idea of taking off during the 4th of July weekend (I was still working remotely via laptop and Blackberry), but, as unbelievable as this may sound, life did go on without me being in the same State. Last week, I signed up for a dance class once a week and a class on Tuesdays. While these are baby steps, I am progressively working my way towards balancing my work and life (although the line may seem pretty fuzzy at times). The hardest thing for me to accept is that I must schedule social events one at a time in order to increase my comfort in not obsessively checking my e-mail for the newest sitting request. The more effort I put into myself, the more efficient I will be at work. My goal is to accept that, it is okay to be unavailable for work without sacrificing it all.

-Jacqueline Rivera
Pawfect Day
@pawfectday

***This was Best Business Tip #56. Read the other 99 Best Business Tips.***