A couple weeks ago, I shared a blog post and video all about What is a cozy entrepreneur? (plus why I became a cozy business owner and my philosophies as a cozy business coach)... so TODAY, let’s do a follow up on that cozy business video! In this article, we’ll explore examples for a day in the life of a cozy business owner and even a WEEK in the life of a cozy entrepreneur, what does it take to create a cozy business, what is soft entrepreneurship, and the guidelines for what does a day in the life of a soft entrepreneur look like (so you can create your own version). Let’s dive in…
What does it take to create a cozy business?
Creating a cozy business does NOT need to be over-complicated!
…and/but, when you want to create a cozy business, there IS a set of best practices for ensuring you create your cozy business in a sustainable way. There is a balance of personal fulfillment and professional excellence; you likely need to unlearn everything you think you know about productivity and entrepreneurship and goal setting; there is an art to serving your clients fully without sacrificing your personal life along the way.
So… How do you do that? What does it take to create a cozy business?
There’s a 9-step cyclical framework that it takes to create a cozy business:
- Identify your desires: Reconnect with yourself, understand your strengths and weaknesses and personal productivity style, and tap into self honesty and self trust.
- Prioritize your goals: Set your goals, create your business plan, and clarify your values.
- Manage your energy: Track your energy levels, manage and prevent burnout, and navigate work/life balance with ease.
- Create your strategies: Put together overall timelines, choose your time management strategies, and map out your plans with intention.
- Organize your tasks: Create your task lists based on the methods that work best for you, connect all tasks to your big goals, and schedule them strategically in your calendar.
- Simplify your processes: Create your documentation manual, structure your business to suit your lifestyle, and reduce your workload.
- Walk your talk: Implement your ideas, take action on your plans, and test out your strategies.
- Fire up your systems: Gamify your business, streamline everything, and automate/delegate/pivot as needed.
- Celebrate your progress: Conduct regular business audits, do performance reviews (yes, even as a solopreneur!), and revisit your business plan for ongoing assessments and shifts to continue fine-tuning your business and always improving it to be the best version of itself (and the best version of YOURself).
You get access to my complete anti-hustle “cozy business” framework (plus templates, step by step guides, real-life examples, and lessons to customize and apply everything you learn to your unique situation) in Productivity Powerhouse:
Productivity Powerhouse is your go-to resource for freelancer productivity tips, how to combat hustle culture, solopreneur success tips, and how to FINALLY attain home-based business owner time freedom.
What does a day in the life of a soft entrepreneur look like?
Your day in the life as a soft entrepreneur won’t necessarily look like another soft entrepreneur’s day in the life!
Why is that? Because soft entrepreneurship (AKA cozy small business ownership, AKA anti hustle business) is about having a lifestyle-first business model… Not just anyone’s life, but YOUR life.
And that means everything should be fully customized to your unique situation.
For example, when I’m working with clients, some of them are night owls whereas others are early birds. Some love the idea of working 3 days/week; others want to set up their businesses for month-long sabbaticals. Some of them do best with a very specific structure of exactly how each day works; others love fluidity and flexibility to make up their mind in the moment. Some of them like working in real-time with their clients/customers (e.g. they have a lot of appointments and meetings), whereas others prefer to work asynchronously (e.g. on their own time).
In other words…
A day in the life of a soft entrepreneur gets to look like however you WANT it to look like.
THAT is your most important guideline to follow when creating your day in the life as a cozy business owner:
- Does it align with your personal values, your current AND ideal lifestyle, what lights you up and fills your cup?
- Is it customized to what you want and need, rather than what you think you “should” do?
- Is it a good fit for who you are and where you want to go and how you want to get there and who you want to be, at THIS stage of life and business (as opposed to what you used to want or the type of person you used to be, for example)?
Those are 3 important questions to ask as you structure your business so that every aspect of it is delightfully cozy and anti-hustle!
(Keep reading — I’ll share a few examples of what my own day in the life of a cozy business owner looks like, and even a full week in the life of a cozy entrepreneur)
What is soft entrepreneurship?
When we’re exploring what does a day in the life of a soft entrepreneur look like, you might also be wondering: What IS soft entrepreneurship?
Soft entrepreneurship, cozy business owner, anti hustle solopreneur; these are all fundamentally the same concept:
→ Creating a lifestyle-first business model that prioritizes your personal fulfillment alongside professional excellence.
In other words, you are getting stuff DONE, making progress on your goals, and producing high-quality work in a timely fashion for clients…
…WITHOUT sacrificing your personal life, your values, time with family, hobbies, etc.
You get to do both!
Another facet of being a soft entrepreneur/cozy small business owner is that you have your own business out of love for the work you’re doing, out of genuine delight and enjoyment in your business itself, out of meaningful relationships with the awesome clients you work with — you are NOT doing this simply to “make a quick buck.”
Taking it a step further: Although you might be ambitious and have big dreams for yourself and your business, you do not see your business as the “be all end all.” You view your business as ONE PART (albeit a very important part) of your life. As such, you aren’t striving to make money at all costs — instead, you conduct your business practices with integrity.
As a soft entrepreneur, you prioritize work/life balance with healthy boundaries and solid communication over the idea of hitting a particular revenue number each year.
You also know that in order to live a good life and show up fully for your clients, you need to be compensated accordingly: You do NOT undercharge or drastically overdeliver. You charge a fair rate for both your clients AND for you.
You are also cognizant of burnout, stress, and overwhelm, and you choose a different path. You strive to take good care of yourself, knowing that when you are well-cared-for, THAT is how you can show up best for other people in your life, too.
That’s cozy small business ownership and soft entrepreneurship in a nutshell! THAT is the anti-hustle way.
Day in the life of a cozy business owner
As a cozy business owner, anti hustle solopreneur, soft entrepreneur (call me what you will!), here are a few examples of what a day in my life looks like…
Example #1 — Day in the life of a cozy business owner (approx 3.5 hours work):
- 8am: Wake up without an alarm clock (I have chronic insomnia and chronic nightmare disorder, so I never know what my sleep is going to be like from one night to the next); get ready for the day and check emails.
- 8:30am: Go for a 90-minute walk.
- 10am: Shower and eat breakfast.
- 10:30am: Do chores while listening to podcasts.
- 11:30am: Read a book or practice dance for an upcoming performance.
- 12pm: Respond to emails.
- 12:30pm: Do some self coaching.
- 1pm: Admin tasks.
- 1:30pm: Watch Love is Blind.
- 4pm: Work on content creation.
- 6pm: Schedule social media posts.
- 6:30pm: End of workday.
Example #2 — Day in the life of a cozy business owner (approx 6 hours work):
- 6am: Wake up to my spouse, Mr Science, bringing me coffee in bed.
- 6:15am: Do an at-home yoga practice with Mr Science.
- 6:45am: Back to bed to read about Stoicism while I continue drinking coffee.
- 7:45am: Start workday (check emails, review task list).
- 8am: Social media posts for that day’s blog post.
- 8:15am: Prep for the monthly bonus training call for my Productivity Powerhouse e-course.
- 9:30am: Get dressed and ready for the day.
- 10am: Host the monthly bonus call for Productivity Powerhouse.
- 11:15am: Read a novel.
- 12:30pm: Write and schedule my Solopreneur Diary Entries weekly newsletter.
- 1:30pm: Do some chores.
- 2pm: Continuing education.
- 3:45pm: Post on Instagram.
- 4pm: End workday.
Example #3 — Day in the life of a cozy business owner (approx 4.5 hours work):
- 7am: Work on blog posts.
- 8:30am: Prep for today’s coaching calls.
- 9am: Get dressed, do chores.
- 10am: Coaching call with Client A.
- 11am: Do chores, read a book, have a snack.
- 1pm: General business ideation, admin tasks, prep for coaching calls, answer emails.
- 2pm: Coaching call with Client B.
- 3pm: Snack.
- 3:30pm: Coaching call with Client C.
- 4:30pm: End workday.
Week in the life of a cozy entrepreneur
As you can see above, my days might fluctuate a bit depending on what’s going on!
But as a general rule, here’s what a week in the life of a cozy entrepreneur looks like (my version, anyway):
- Coaching calls (and ideally any other meetings/appointments), plus any Productivity Powerhouse bonus trainings, on Tuesdays - Thursdays (and those happen in just 2 weeks for each month — which means I have a week in between each “coaching call week,” where I don’t book any appointments, calls, or meetings).
- Mondays and Fridays are typically free of any appointments or coaching calls — sometimes I’ll use those days to prepare for the week or wind things down, or I’ll take long weekends, or I’ll do general admin tasks, or I’ll do bigger-picture thinking.
- Wake-up time varies from season to season, as well as based on whether my insomnia/nightmares are acting up. But typically I like to be awake around 6 - 6:30am and starting my day around 7:30 - 8am.
- Getting outside for fresh air depends on what my day holds AND what season we’re in — I typically skip my walk if I have a lot of coaching calls that day. In the summer, I go for a walk first thing in the morning (before it gets too hot); in the winter, I go for a walk in the middle of the day (when it’s warmer).
- I often take some chunk of time off in the middle of the day to do chores, relax and read books (or watch reality TV if the latest season of Love is Blind just came out!), or to work on dance choreography when I have an upcoming dance performance.
- End of day typically aligns with when Mr Science returns home from week (somewhere around 4 - 4:30pm). If he’s out of town doing fieldwork, then my workday might have a big break in the middle of the day and I might do work again from around 4 - 7pm.
- How many hours I work fluctuates depending on what projects I’m working on, the season of the year/life/business, etc. However, so far this year I’ve worked on average 20 hours/week — keeping in mind that that includes 5 weeks off work for various vacations/travel, plus an additional 8 or 9 weeks that had long weekends already built into them. So in a typical workweek, I might work closer to 25 hours/week.
Why do I work less than 30 hours/week?
I partly work less than 30 hours/week because I have lots of hobbies (e.g. I’m with several dance troupes, all of which do dance performances multiple times each year; I also co-host a hobby podcast with my sister where we do movie franchise recaps).
I partly work less than 30 hours/week because I really love leisurely weekends, so I like to do chores etc throughout the week so that I don’t have to worry about them on the weekends.
I partly work less than 30 hours/week because — especially as someone who has chronic anxiety, nightmares, and insomnia, and as a Mental Projector in Human Design — I simply don’t have the creative bandwidth or mental capacity to do more than 30 hours/week WELL. I can feel my brain slowing down and my productivity taking a dip when I work more than 30 hours/week.
I start to lose efficiency after about 25 hours/week, so in that case… WHY would I continue working, when I’m not working at my best? It makes more sense for me to take a break from work and return to my desk fully energized and at peak efficiency, rather than to “force myself” to keep working when I’m more sluggish.
Would you love to create a cozy business for yourself?
Are you intrigued by the idea of soft entrepreneurship?
Do you have your own version for a day in the life of a cozy business owner or a week in the life of a cozy entrepreneur that you’d like to make YOUR new reality?
Productivity Powerhouse is the BEST place to make that happen (includes solopreneur success tips for true home-based business owner time freedom):
