At the end of 2023 I made the, somewhat crazy, decision to start a second business. I want to help as many people as I can to understand their finances and I was seeing a lot of posts on social media, particularly from Etsy sellers, that made it clear they needed more help but couldn’t afford a bookkeeper yet. So I started a second business called Casmarelle with the sole purpose of empowering Etsy sellers to master their finances. The only downside to this is that it was going to take up more of my time so I needed to figure out how I was going to do it.

Running two businesses requires careful time management to ensure neither of them suffer at the hands of the other. I also home educate my two children and I needed to ensure they weren’t impacted either. The first step for me to manage them both was to map out what my day actually looked like and where I could find some extra time. Home educating the kids and working in Ell Evan Bookkeeping takes up my day time hours, so that left me with the evening. All I usually do once the kids are in bed is to watch TV or play on my phone, so I figured I could probably take an hour out of that and not miss it much! And so far, touch wood, it’s working. Some days it’s more of a struggle than others, especially if I’m tired or if there’s a really good show on that I can’t wait to watch, but for the most part I’m sticking to the plan. I am aware that it’s still early days for Casmarelle so I’m not flooded with orders or overwhelmed with admin at the moment, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Tools I use

There are some tools that I use to help me keep on track:

• Tick list app on my phone – I have an app on my phone (it’s just called Notes and came with the phone but I’m sure there’s dedicated ones out there that are probably fancier!) that I use to note down anything that I think of during the day that I need to get done. I always have my phone with me so it’s handier than carrying a notebook or trying to remember what it was that I thought of at the end of the day. Once I get to the end of the day I pop the note into my diary, which leads me nicely onto…
• Diary for weekly and monthly planning – This has been a lifesaver! I love both digital and physical notebooks/dairies but I use a digital one for Ell Evan Bookkeeping so I wanted something different for Casmarelle so I could separate them easily in my head. I bought an undated dairy from Amazon (this one if you want to be nosey). I use the weekly pages to plan out what I’m doing for the next few weeks (and I make sure I keep a few weeks ahead of myself so that if I finish anything early I have a list of tasks waiting that I can crack on with). I use the monthly pages to plan out my social media posts for the next month. Which leads me onto…
• Batching social media content – I plan all my social media content, for both businesses, a month in advance. Every third week of the month I am planning the content, creating the images and scheduling in the posts for the following month. I’d love to be one of these people that can post on the fly and always seem to have something to say but unfortunately that’s just not me. Don’t get me wrong I still occasionally post things as and when but knowing that I’ve got posts scheduled for the month is a big stress saver.
• Sticking to what is important right now – I’ve been reading a lot of business books recently and the one message that has stuck with me was from Meera Koothand (you can find her books here). She stresses the importance of only doing what is crucial for the stage that your business is in right now. For example, for Casmarelle there is no point me learning all about launching a big course or starting a membership right now (even though I do want to get to that point) because my audience is teeny tiny at the moment and I need to concentrate on growing it first. So whenever I think “should I be doing this?” I just have to ask myself “will it help me with where I am right now?” If the answer is no, then I make a note of it for something to look at later on down the line but then turn my attention to more useful endeavours.

Things I’ve learnt

Running two businesses is not easy, however I have learnt a lot. I’ve learnt how to manage my time better to ensure I’m still able to do most things that I want to (I still haven’t found the time for all the craft things that I want to make but I will do!). Equally I’ve learnt to give myself a break and listen to my body if it’s telling me that I’m too tired and need a rest and not feel guilty about that… well not as guilty as I used to feel anyway! I’ve also learnt to say “no” to things both personal and business wise that won’t help me right now.

I guess my point of this blog post was to reassure you that it is possible to do more things with the same amount of time in the day. You’ve just got to learn how to:

• manage your time effectively (which may look completely different to how I do it)
• be strict with yourself and say no to things
• give yourself a break!