Owning a business and making time to practice self-care can be extremely difficult. Your home and business life are tied together. You can find yourself answering emails during time off, working during dinner, and not taking time to do the things that bring you joy.
This is another Q & A style post in which I interviewed Michelle West-the amazing owner of Top Tier Escape Room. Her answers about self-care & business were so incredibly helpful.
1. What is your business and how did you get started? What sparked your interest? I own and manage an escape room business in Southern California. I started this business with my husband because an escape room was one of our first dates and we both got hooked on them right away! With his business/accounting background, my artistic abilities, and our mutual love for puzzles, we figured we’d give the industry a try!
2. Since starting my small business, I have found it difficult at times to separate work from home life. Have you experienced this as well? If so, what are some of your best tips to prevent this? I have definitely found it hard to separate work from my home life. We build all of the props in the rooms ourselves, so we often bring home some of the smaller tech pieces. The living room in our apartment is slowly getting invaded by different pieces of props and technology that will eventually make it into our future rooms, but having that portion of work in the middle of our home, does it make it difficult to relax. I also manage and schedule our 5 employees, so I find myself getting constant texts and calls from staff when I’m out to dinner or trying to relax at home. I get very overwhelmed sometimes, because if they’re reaching out to me it might mean something went wrong during someone’s game, so I feel like I’m constantly on call even when I’m not at work. One thing I’ve stopped doing, which has seemed to help a bit, is that I stopped reading our business’ reviews as often. I used to read them all the time before bed, and whenever we got a less than stellar review, I would end up thinking about it all night and going to bed upset which is clearly not healthy at all lol. So for the most part, I think the main thing that has helped me separate work from home life is once our business is closed for the night (customers can no longer book games), I leave my phone in another room. At that point, if I’m getting a text or call from an employee, it can most likely wait.
3. What advice do you have for other small business owners about self-care?
If you’re just starting out and struggling to get business, don’t get down on yourself. It takes time to build a reputable brand and especially while COVID is still a factor, people are much more hesitant to try new brands or companies that they aren’t already familiar with. So mainly, just don’t let your business’ success become a personal reflection of yourself or your worth. :)
4. Taking time for yourself is important. How do you practice self-care? How do you make this happen even while running your business? Like I said earlier, I mostly take time for myself by leaving my phone in another room and just taking some time away from screens. Personally, if I’m not wrangling calls from my employees, I tend to scroll through social media mindlessly and start to compare myself to other people/businesses. So my main self-care practice is stepping away from technology as often as possible!
5. Taking time off as a small business owner can be tough, but is so important in order to prevent burnout. How do you go about taking a break from your business? If I’m ever getting so overwhelmed that I feel like I need a full break from work, I’ll communicate with my shift manager and let her know that I won’t be available for X amount of hours and it’s up to her to figure out any issues that arise. I rarely do this because I find it hard to trust anyone but myself to deal with things haha, but sometimes I know that it’s the healthiest course of action for me.
6. What is one thing that you wished people knew about owning a small business? One thing I wish people knew about owning a small business is that you can’t give out your products/services for free to every extended family member and friend. Owning this business for a little over 3 years now, it’s been kind of an awkward struggle hinting to friends that they can’t just play our games for free. I’ll try to give discounts for the most part, but it’s the absolute worst when someone just assumes because they know you, they’ll get to play a game for free that took months and sometimes even years to build.