Designing Your Dream Schedule: How to Achieve Work-Life Balance with a Virtual Business

One of the big benefits of having a virtual business is the potential for more time freedom. 

This is personally one of my favorite parts of owning a virtual business! 

Not only do you streamline your physical workday (no commute, no need to get gas, fewer distractions during the day, etc.), but the work itself is more leveraged, meaning it takes less time to generate income. 

For example, you can sell customers a digital product like a course or ebook without requiring time (once it's set up). 

Or, if you're a coach, consultant, or service provider, you may only need to work with a handful of clients to reach your income goals. 

Of course, this ties in with virtual businesses' low overhead and high profit margins, too—but I'll save that for another day. 

Outside of providing your digital products or services, however, online business owners need to spend time behind the scenes to run their business (just like any other business on the planet). 

Some of the everyday activities of a virtual business owner might include:

Marketing Activities:

• Creating content like writing a weekly blog post (like this one!). 
• Distributing your content on social media platforms you use (like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram).
  
• Staying in touch with your email subscribers by writing a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter.  
• Networking with your peers or spending time in industry groups or communities. 

Housekeeping and Customer Service Activities:

• Responding to customer service emails with questions about your products and services. 
• Responding to audience comments and questions on social media. 

Business and Personal Growth Activities:

• Reading books or continuing your education in some way to grow yourself and your business a little each month.
• Spending time reflecting on the bird's eye view of your business and making adjustments as needed. 

Like any other small business owner, virtual business owners wear many hats during each work week. Again, the virtual nature of the business allows us to accomplish a lot with less time than most jobs or brick-and-mortar businesses can. 

For the past nine years with my Princess Ballerinas business, I have been able to do the following activities working just 10 hours a week (averaging 2 hours a day):

• Running Facebook ads promoting a free sample lesson plan to dance studio owners. 
• Sending follow-up emails. 
• Responding to customer service emails (answering questions, customers needing access to login, etc.)
  
• Creating content for members or other digital products I make. 
  

I've had small children at home for the past nine years, so I chose to keep my business simple and flexible. 

All of those tasks could be handled during naps and in the evenings. This worked for me while my kids were young and still at home. 

With my more recent Shine Online work, I've expanded my weekly activities and workload because I'll have more time to focus on my work with my youngest child starting full-time preschool this fall. 

My weekly tasks for my Shine Online work include:

• Writing a weekly blog post (like this one!). 
• Recording an episode for my podcast (The Shine Online Podcast). 
• Distributing my weekly content to social media platforms (Facebook and LinkedIn are my preferences for my market). 
• Sending a weekly newsletter to my subscribers. 
• Managing my Facebook ads.
• Networking activities include collaborations, staying in touch with my personal and professional network, staying in touch with past clients, etc. 
• Speaking activities- Doing local in-person speaking events, speaking at virtual events, and podcast interviews.
• Continued education- I'm always reading a book or taking a course to improve myself, my skills, my client work, and my business. 
• Reflection and Strategy time to take a 30,000-foot view of my business. 

Plus, unlike my work serving dance studio owners, which is based on 100% passive digital products, with my work with Shine Online, I spend time each week speaking with clients on the phone and executing client work, including a mix of thinking and strategizing, website design, branding, graphic design, copywriting, and tech set-up.

I know that sounds like a lot of activities. Keep in mind that I've been doing this virtual business thing for nine years now. I choose to do all these activities because I truly love them and enjoy the variety. 

Most virtual business owners will start with a simpler business like my Princess Ballerinas business. 

Even with the variety of tasks and client responsibilities I tackle each week with my Shine Online business, I still accomplish everything in just 20 hours a week, averaging 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday. 

Even those four hours are broken up. A typical day might include a 30-minute client call in the morning, an hour writing a blog post and recording a podcast episode in the afternoon, and then two hours in the evenings (once my kiddos are in bed) on client work. 

By anyone's standards, 20 hours a week is "part-time" work. Yet, I can generate a full-time income doing work that's fun, exciting, fulfilling, enjoyable, and still very flexible for me. 

What am I doing with the rest of my time?

I'm still a mom of nine and a three-year-old, so that takes up much of my time. Even though I fancy myself a savvy businesswoman, I also enjoy the domestic side of my life. I enjoy taking care of my family and home. I enjoy cooking; I typically cook three meals a day from scratch because I enjoy it. I have plenty of time to keep the house neat, which I (strangely) enjoy. Outside of my family, I also have plenty of time for self-care. 

For example, I enjoy taking a long walk each day and exploring interesting subjects related to spirituality or personal growth. I have time to meditate and take a 20-minute nap every single afternoon. 

So even though I am checking off a lot of boxes each week in my business, because of the nature of virtual businesses, I still have plenty of time for other areas of my life, all while having the freedom, independence, and fulfillment that comes from doing work that I love. 

In short, I get to have it all because of my virtual business and because I designed it that way.

You can "have it all," too,  whatever that means to you. 

A virtual business can give you the luxury of time and freedom to create a life you love in all areas. You just need to be smart and strategic about how you set things up and structure your business and schedule.