Swipe Business Messenger is a great app that can help you to get backyour work life balance

When you startup your own business there is a lot of information thrown at you. For the small business owner and entrepreneur you will make use of your smartphone and many of the features on it to stay in touch with your customers, suppliers and business contacts. But sometimes you want to be able to switch off from all of this and keep in touch with your friends and family.

I know from my experience I look at my smartphone and think “I’m not going onto that because it will be full of work-relate messages. I’m having some time off.” But your smartphone is also where you keep in touch with friends, check out social media updates and generally hang out.

There is a solution to the problem of separating your work life from your private life. That solution is Swipe Business Messenger. It is an instant messaging app for your phone that allows you to easily separate your business and social messaging. It means that your smartphone is a safe area to visit again after work hours! You want to be the best startup owner you can be and a part of that is taking some time away from the business to catch up with your personal life.

As a self-employed business or as a freelancer there is so much pressure on your time already. There is currently no way to separate your business from your social life on your smartphone – until now because Swipe Business Messenger has looked at this problem as developed a solution. Technostress is a real issue for the startup business owner and can cause you to lose that important balance between your work life and your home life. It is a hugely important distinction to make and when these two merge you find that business becomes tougher and much more stressful. Work life balance has become a major issue in employment over the last few years and Swipe Business Messenger are working to get that balance back into the right place.

I love to bring you ideas that will make a big change to you and your startup business and Swipe Business Messenger is a great innovation that can help you to have that crucial time away from your business to relax and unwind. Many startup businesses have failed because of the stress that constant connection with your client base and business does. This is starting the fight back!

I'm still here!

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In case anyone was wondering if is fallen off the face of the earth, this is just a short note to say that in still here.

Quite a bit of progress since I last posted, so here goes-

The Business

Paint the left wall of the garage done

Assemble the table that will be my desk -table broken -buying new desk tomorrow

Paint the rest of the garage -ran out of paint, buy some more tomorrow

At Home

Sand and paint the bathroom ceiling - tomorrow morning

Glue stones on cupboards in kitchen -tomorrow morning

Paint hall and landing - still a work in progress

My "Books And Games" Selling Business

Get all stock out of loft and place in new office in garage -done

Check and update inventory -tomorrow

Writing

Finish a book I'm writing on how to buy a home -3 chapters done, 5 to go

Edit the book down to get it ready to publish - first edit if written chapters done, final edit when all finished

Start the creative writing course I've enrolled in - after my photography course finishes in March 

Mystery shops

Update my spreadsheet with all shop data on -done

Prepare for the 7 shops I have on Thursday -done (ended up being 8 shops!)

Look at adding to the 4 shops I have on Friday done (got it up to 6 jobs!)

Look up online about self-assessment and tax -tomorrow

Photography course

Go to the local city and get the final city photos for my final project, based on the main river that runs by here - done

Retake some of the other photos I have, in the golden hour, to ensure the sky is lit best - no need, as the photos from above were do good

This update helps me as much as you guys, but it's nice to see some meat on the homes and some progress to the planning.

Tomorrow is a day off, and it looks like a busy day! Add 3 mystery shops to the above activities, but I'm confident that I'll get this done!

Downtime helps the mind focus

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I've been wrestling with the amount of time I spend on setting up my estate agency business. It feels that alongside a full time job, two other small business interests and a family, the work put into setting up my estate agency means that I gave little or no downtime. I'm not talking about hour after your watching TV or playing video games, but some time spent doing not a great deal, and this helps me to reflect on where I am, decide on next best steps and do things like this - writing my blogs. I'm actually typing this whilst on the bus on the way to work (park and ride has changed the face of many cities) and therein lies the problem - every spare minute is filled with activity. Now this blog can be quite therapeutic, and I'm able to use it as a sounding board for me, as much as it provides an insight for you - the reader.

Ill blog again into lunch break, and probably again on the bus on the way home, and possibly again tonight whilst I'm back on the PC.

However, there needs to be more time spent on playing with the kids, family days out, quality time with my wife, etc to ensure I keep a focus on why I'm doing all this.

Don't think that this is a moan about how things are going, it's just me putting down some thoughts and fears about how it's going.

Presently I've got about 100 emails needing some action - the vast majority are surveys, which bring in Christmas spending money. I carry out loads of mystery shops, as I looked at in yesterday's blog. Yesterday afternoon I had 3 jobs to sort out in the bathroom and there's a couple more to sort out in the house.

In all, I need to carry out the following-

*get all the jobs in the house done and straightened our before the business starts

*decide on whether I will continue with surveys and mystery shops when I start the business

*set aside times for certain tasks, such as surveys, emails, time with the kids - in other words, plan my time (I'll get a diary today)

*decide when the best time to stop my full-time job and start full-time in the business is

Looking forward, not backwards.

Making time for everything needs planning

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Here comes another weekend, another weekend off work and another weekend where I've made loads of and for what I'm going to do to entertain the kids. But I am using today's blog to remind mysf that I need to make time and make plans for my fledgling business.

A trip out tonight and a quite full day out tomorrow make the weekend feel hectic at the outset, but there's light at the end if the tunnel. I'm going to a talk and discussion on the future of social housing tomorrow - a sort of busman's holiday. During the day out with my wife and kids, I will break away for a couple of hours, leaving them to explore the city. I'll be interested in the theory of the talk, in the future of social housing, but with always a slant towards how this relates to my business and how I can use the information to expand the business and earn money.

Tonight's trip out will be to an illuminations, and I need to use this time to get my homework done for my photography class.  I need to take one photo, bearing in mind the discussions we had last week on composition. It needs to be well composed, using the rule of thirds, leading lines, the balance of colours and textures. I will also need to present it to the rest of the group and explain my photo in technical language. Wish me luck!

I'll share the photo on here and the feedback I receive.

Don't give up the day job…yet

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After a day dedicated to nothing but my day job (day 241 to go) I'm back at work a full day again today. I have spoken to my line manager and asked for a transfer to another location, to try to ease my stress at working in poor conditions here.

The established, experienced core of the team are all disgruntled, to say the least, at the structure and leadership at present and all are looking at alternatives. The replacements as people leave are generally young girls, in the mould of the manager, and have been unreliable and of a poor standard. My employer pays poorly, has a poor reputation and offers no immediate career prospects, so it can be difficult to attract quality applicants.

I await the response from other locations in the region that are looking for staff, at what can be a busy time for the retail industry.

All part of keeping my sanity and preserving my work/life balance when I need to use my 'off-work' time in the most fruitful way possible.

This leads to my next quest - a timetable of events for the next 240 days to ensure I'm ready.

The NEW Amazon Fire phone