Monday Motivation: The Entrepreneurial Gift of Flexibility

Monday Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Business Owners

Looking out over William Penn’s statue, high above the street, as light snowflakes dropped from the skies, I contemplated my first Christmas as a 21-year-old working woman. Having joined a Philadelphia Investment Banking firm in August, there wasn’t enough vacation time accrued to allow me a trip home for the holiday. Long before computers and phones gave flexibility for staff to work from afar, being tied to a desk as a recent hire, meant traveling to my hometown for Christmas wasn’t possible.

When I think about the entrepreneurial life I choose nine years after that sad holiday, I wonder if the big lights of a city I loved, wasn’t enough for this sentimental girl from a large family where holidays were truly special? The buzz of Wall Street figures, planning events at the Five Seasons Hotel, having international clients grant me gifts, and being treated to the Opera, were pretty exciting for a 21-year-old business professional looking to climb the corporate ladder. But home always tugged at my heart.

Most women start their own businesses to make more money than they could corporately and not to answer to a permanent boss, but what they also love is the flexibility that comes from this type of career. Flexibility to set their own holiday hours, take off time if a child is ill without using their own sick time, attending holiday school musicals, and bringing cookies to their kid’s classrooms. Yes, we have to be able to maintain work commitments during the holidays, but we have the choice to set the boundaries.

As you start, or even take off, this bustling week for holiday shopping, cooking, and parenting as a female business owner, remember one of the gifts you give yourself is the gift of working whatever hours you choose, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to accomplish your work and goals. If you have planned wisely, and your business industry allows, put those feet up on your desk, peer out the window for fresh falling snow, bake those holiday cookies, attend those musical performances, and pat yourself on the back for creating an entrepreneurial work gift for yourself.