No Time To Start A Farm Business Is An Excuse – 8 Tips To Make It Possible

You may think you don’t have time for the things that you need to do, much less for the things you want to do.

Starting a farm business?! Forget it.

But the truth is, you make time for what’s important. Eeeeeekkk Steppin on some toes.

Whether you tend towards the side of working too much and not enjoying life or you often run around like a chicken with your head cut off struggling to get things done you are still giving your time to the things that matter the most to you. 

The problem is, sometimes there are things that appear more important than they really are. For example, if you have a job, you probably think that your job should come first no matter what, just because you don’t want to get fired and you need the paycheck. Or there is no way you would let the dishes sit for a few hours while you go on a walk with your family. 

I am preaching to the choir here.

This is what you’ve been taught your entire life and what is expected. Be productive, and get things done, you’re lazy if you don’t. 

The thought of letting work sit for just a bit is often very stress-inducing, due to the expectations that society puts on people today to be productive. 

But the problem is – we need more than work and putting work first all the time is not realistic or healthy. 

Cultivating a lifestyle you love is far more important. Never missing work to go on a picnic, taking your kids on a surprise trip to the lake, or even just meeting your spouse for lunch are the sweet moments of life that we miss out on. 

Because your life is about those things, not about your work, with few exceptions. 

If you are having issues aligning your lifestyle to meet your goals so that you can live the way that you desire, you have a little work to do. 

Most of it has to do with time management and reestablishing what is truly important to you in your life. 

You’ll want to set SMART goals for life and business, design actionable steps, schedule those actions, and then you’ll be working toward creating the lifestyle you want to live. Sound good?

Establish Time-Centered Boundaries 

A time-centered boundary is a line you won’t cross when it comes to something being interrupted. 

A personal example is I won’t meet a rabbit transporter or buyer over church times. We have Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night set aside for church. I would rather lose a sale than skip. I don’t even like having some people meet Sunday afternoons but I try to be as flexible as possible.

While this is a personal boundary I won’t let my business cross it’s also important that you have boundaries around giving yourself time to work.

Personal Boundry Examples

For everyone, this is going to be different. What you value is going to be different than what someone else values. Not only that, what you enjoy doing is going to be different too.

• If you have kids, you may feel that certain times during the day are more important.
• Can date night with your spouse be interrupted or not?
• Will you miss your child’s event, and if so, what reason is good enough?

Business Boundry Examples

• Maybe you get to work two nights a week.
• Some people love editing videos, others hate it. If you like it, and it is part of your business, you may place more priority on editing videos than writing blog posts. 

It’s all up to you.

Think about the things that are extremely important to you now. So when something demands your time over that block of time that is off limits you can say no without hesitation. 

Set Clear Expectations for Others 

While you’re making expectations for yourself, you’ll want to set them for others too. You can’t be upset with someone when you haven’t made your personal boundaries clear to them. In both your personal life and in your business life. They didn’t know that thing was important to you.

If everyone knows you’re going to go to your child’s games every single time. Then your customers will expect it and will accept it. If it’s unusual, they might be annoyed if it interferes with what they wanted. 

Find ways to me it clear what you are doing. If you have an office and the door is closed it shouldn’t be opened. Have a way to put a sign on the door to tell them what you are doing.

Everyone from your dog to your child should know when not to interrupt you and when it’s okay to do so. 

On my rabbitry for sale page, I put the “office hours” so they know when they can expect a response back from messages or emails. 

BUT it only works when you stick to those boundaries as well. 

Set SMART Life and Business Goals 

Learn how to set goals properly. When you do set goals the right way, you end up with something that can be used to track your progress. But before you set any goals you need to be clear on where you stand in your life and farm business AND where you are going. 

A clear picture of both points is so important or you are going to end up wasting your time. 

Your goals will be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. 

From those goals, you can create your plans to make sure the goals are reached.

Create Action Steps from Your Goals

The good thing about making the goals the right way is that you can create action steps from your goals. 

Then you can take those goals or tasks and put them into your calendar when it needs to be done or you would like to reach the goal. 

Don’t put just the due date in the calendar for the end goal, put the actions you need to take on the day you need to take them in your calendar as well. 

Work Smarter Not Harder To Reach Your Goals  

Think carefully about every action that you take and what jobs or tasks can you do at the same time that will help you move forward. It doesn’t have to be hard or complicated but if you were walking in one direction and you can grab the tools you need for one job as well as another why not bring them both back with you even if you’re not planning on doing that second job right now.

Also, make sure that you were using digital tools that will help you get the job done faster or work while you don’t have to.

Schedule your social media content, batch write your blog posts, and edit your videos the right way so they can be published on multiple platforms.

Learn to Love Your Calendar (schedule everything)

If having a schedule makes you feel boxed in don’t shoot me. But you need a plan and a schedule. If you just ride by the set of your paints life will just happen to you. You won’t reach your business goals and you certainly won’t get to where you want to be in life or business.

Your calendar is so important because you shouldn’t only be using it when you have an appointment to keep. 

Each day should have its own plan. From what you need to do in the morning with farm chores, what your kiddoes have going on, date night with your spouse, to that awesome vacation you are going on, and when your animals are due to have their babies. This is my favorite planner that allows you to schedule out your day by the hour. If your brain needs paper don’t fight it trying to use digital.

It also tells you what you need to do to generate income today for your farm business. It’s so easy to get stuck in the weeds and not realize you haven’t done anything to increase income. You might have even let your marketing slip and it is showing in your sales. 

Stick to It Every Day 

The main thing that is going to bring success is sticking to your plans for the long term. Having a business that runs itself takes A LOT of work, in the beginning, to set up. 

Make sure that what you expect of yourself is realistic. You can’t expect yourself to get 34 hours worth of work done in a 24hr day.

This is why I LOVE time blocking. It helps you to SEE what you are expecting yourself to get done. Even if it is something as small as collecting the eggs you should still put it on your calendar. It still takes 10-15 minutes to put on shoes walk out to the coop gather the eggs and walk back. That’s if you don’t get distracted and do something else.

Adjust as Needed 

It would be foolish of me to think that you could get through the day without having any interruptions. With other humans in your life, animals, and nature affecting your farm business there are going to be hiccups.

BUT when you know the plan for the day you can QUICKLY reassess and adjust. Moving the things that are not as important to the next day. 

Notice I didn’t say urgent. That is a topic for another time. 

Also when you are making plans and schedules you can see where your time is being spent and in turn look to see what is affecting your success and what is working to reach your goals and what is not working. 

Because of this, you can change and make things better as you go.

Aligning your work and to-do list to help you build the farm business and life you want requires an understanding of time management, a mindset change about what matters most to you, and how your actions affect not only today but the future. Even on the days that have gone crazy, you can find one small task to market your business. Adding one more ounce of weight to that boulder called momentum. 

Watch this video to see what I mean in real life.