{Image provided by Michelle Ward}

When April asked me to be part of her amazeballs new series, I obviously jumped at the chance. Not only do I love me some April Bowles-Olin (she’s the sweetest, and that’s the truth), but I think it’s such a great idea to shine the light on how us Women of the World (as I like to call us full-time female entrepreneurs) get it all done. But now, I’m shaking a bit, because…well…every freaking day is different!

As The When I Grow Up Coach, I’m officially a “creative career coach”. So, the majority of my time (and the money I earn!) come from working with clients one-on-oneand in groups. I usually have 30-40 of those sessions each month, with each session being between 45-90 minutes. I also like to take an Off Week once a month, where I have no more than 3 sessions and get to work instead on my blogging, business building stuff, collaborations, products, social hours, speaking gigs – really, anything that falls under those unofficial titles I have (writer, bookkeeper, marketer, publicist, copywriter, video producer, songwriter, yada yada yada). I’m also a total Renaissance Soul (I have lots of passions & hate having to focus on just one of ’em!), so I usually work on 2-3 projects at a time and switch tasks about every hour.

How’s that for a disclaimer? I don’t mean to negate what’s gonna be written below – I’d just need to do one of these each day for a month to give ya the broadest picture of A Day in the Life of The Crazy When I Grow Up Coach. But here’s a real birds-eye view of Monday, December 12th (not part of an Off Week!):

• 7:50a: alarm goes off
• 8:15a: husband gets up (which is so rare – I’m usually up first and have to help him out of bed with kisses and arm tugs). I roll over to his side of the bed (I rarely get the whole bed to myself!) and settle in, but my brain’s racing and I already feel “up”. I unplug my iPhone and check my email, Facebook, and twitterfeeds from bed. Yes, I know – it’s a sickness.
• 8:35a: make 6 cups of coffee (2 for the hubs, 4 for me) and turn on my DVRd episode of Judge Judy from Friday. I always start my day with some Judge Judy justice.
• 9:05a: head to my email and start looking at the group exercises/emails from Operations! clients sent my way. Print out all their exercises, mark ’em up with some notes, add ’em to their files in Batchbook, respond to their emails, check their private Facebook groups for updates and respond to anything new. Eat oatmeal for breakfast in front of the computer.
• 10:05a: respond to an email from a prospective client, and some well wishes, too. They’re the sweetest.
• 10:15a: respond to a client who needs to schedule a session, confirming it as well as adding it to her Batchbook profile (and checking off the To Do to follow-up with her about it later in the week)
• 10:20a: get ready for my group session, take out my notes, refill my coffee, grab my quilt (it’s cold in here!) and the phone.
• 10:28a: dial in to the 10:30a group session.
• 11:30a: finish the session, acknowledging (a) I have a ton of energy and the hour flies by and (b) I stink.
• 11:35a: respond to emails about my teleseminar-turned-product, as my collaborator & I need to figure out how payment between us will work now that we’re selling it as a product on both of our sites as opposed to it being a live event.
• 11:45a: I post the 10:30a session recording in the private Facebook group, along with a link to next week’s group homework (our last!), a whole bunch of links to help one of the clients create a budget for her biz, and more links to help my client get connected to other local writers. Also, answer other emails that have come in from Operation-ers and lurk around the private Facebook group more. Watch a video one of my clients made on EFT and tell her why it was amazeballs.
• 12:20p: talk to my husband and my mother.
• 12:35p: respond to tweets.
• 12:40p: realize the stink has to stop. While I’m usually adamant about taking a shower first thing (and getting dressed for “work!”), I’ve put myself on self-imposed house arrest until Wednesday to properly recuperate from my lumpectomy last week, and that involves not having to get out of my pjs. I take this too far by waiting so long to shower on top of it. So, I think of my husband not having to sleep on the couch and get my hygiene on. (OK, I’m now mortified by having admitted this. But, I got a can’t-be-disputed excuse: boob cancer! Let’s me get away with everything)
• 12:55p: warm up some matzoh ball soup my Mom made for lunch. Return the call to my Nana. (Can these 20 minutes be any more Jewish?)
• 1:15p: update my WordPress plugins. Realize I broke the back-end of my site and I can’t load any of my pages. Call my husband and ask him to rescue me.. He does. I decide to keep him.
• 1:30p: update everything on my site to reflect my teleseminar-turned-product, removing dates from everything, taking it off my Events page and adding it to myWorkbooks page. I think of putting it on it’s own page because I don’t necessarily wanna call it a workbook (there are 5 MP3s that go along with it), but decide against it. I have a thing for making everything more complicated than it is, and so I recognize that this would classify as that. I resist the urge and pat myself on the back.
• 2:25p: realize that some of my testimonial people on the sidebars of some pages are broken. Sound the alarm to my Virtual Wizard, who fixes it lickety-split.
• 2:30p: answer questions for a blog post for Tamarisk, all about connection. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Goes quicker than I thought, and I send them her way for review.
• 2:55p: write tomorrow and Wednesday’s blog posts, find images that suit ’em, and double-check that all the links work.
• 3:55p: update my Grads about the next group call, and close up the one that’s supposed to take place tomorrow. I don’t have any takers yet and I need a night off.
• 4p: write this post! Well, start writing it. I promise to accurately reflect the rest of the day and not make it up 🙂
• 4:40p: prep for my private client at 5p. She always sends me big fat updates as to what happened since our last session, and I wanna make sure I have time to read and digest everything. I print it out (it’s 6 pages!), read it through, and mark it up with the points/questions I wanna address on our call.
• 4:55p: get ready for my private session, taking out my notes, getting some water, going to the bathroom(quickly!), turning on the lights (it’s dark in here!), grabbing the phone, and settling into my comfy chair.
• 5-5:55p: private client session on the phone. It went over, so I have to rush a bit to my next one.
• 5:55p: open up the group homework that my client sent me. Print it out, mark it up, add it to her Batchbook file, grab my notes, and get back into the comfy chair.
• 6-6:35: group session
• 6:35p: talk to husband
• 6:38p: eat 3 handful of peanuts to hold me over ’til husband comes home
• 6:40p: watch a funny video posted on Facebook
• 6:45p: post the session recording in the private Facebook group (it’s a different group than the one this morning), along with a link to next week’s group homework (our last!) and some notes on us wrapping up
• 6:50p: send an email to my 5p client with a link to our call, a crapload of links I think she’d find helpful, info on wrapping up (it’s our last session next week, too!), and a summary of the homework she agreed to do for this week.
• 7:10p: answer emails (from a group coaching client, more well wishes, and a media request). At this point I’m pretty much working until my man comes home.
• 7:45p: husband comes home. All work stops. Kisses and mail-opening and “I’m so hungry!” ensue.
• 7:50p: proofread this post and send it off to April

G’Day all, and thanks so much to April for having me here on Blacksburg Belle. For those who don’t know me, my name’s Jess Van Den, and I’m a full-time creative entreprener – a jeweller, blogger and the editor of *bespoke* zine. I live in the lovely warm state of Queensland down here in Australia.

Because my business has many different facets, each day is a little different – so today I’ve chosen to take you through my regular Tuesday!

Somewhere between 7am and 8am: I’ll be roused by my lovely husband Nick, when he puts a cup of tea down on my bedside table. It takes me a bit of time to wake up in the morning, so the tea is mandatory! I’ll then grab my laptop, check e-mails and deal with anything urgent (like renewing items that have sold in my Etsy or madeit shops). I’ll also finish and send out the *bespoke* Weekly Goodness newsletter, as I do every Tuesday morning.

8:30 am: I spend 20 minutes on the exercise bike while reading a novel on my kindle. I’m a voracious reader, and it’s not uncommon for me to read a whole novel each day. Thank goodness for .99c novels by indie authors!

9ish: Time for a shower, some sort of breakfast, and a bit more time on the computer.

10 am: I move over to my bench and start making my latest orders. Generally I make orders all day Monday, so today I’ll be finishing up what I didn’t get done yesterday. I’ll move between the bench and my computer desk throughout the day, chatting on twitter, checking e-mail etc.

12:30 pm: Nick and I will sit down together and have our main meal of the day – lunch – around 12:30 or so, and I’ll take a bit of a break, perhaps read some more of my novel. He’s an awesome cook (and is in charge of all cooking/shopping etc) – we’re currently working our way through Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals cookbook!

1 pm: Time to pack up all the orders I’ve completed, and give them to Nick. He’ll head out to the post office for me, so I can keep working.

2:30 pm: Back to the computer. I’ll deal with some more e-mails and other admin tasks, as well as perhaps writing a blog post or two. Chances are I’ll do some work on *bespoke* as well! I’ll catch up with twitter, write something on my Facebook biz pages, and do a little thinking about my priorities for the week. I’ll probably take a 15-minute break in here and fit in a bit more reading, too!

5:30 pm: Tuesdays are one of my running days. I’m working my way through the C25K again at the moment, so honestly they’re more run-walk-run-walk days at the moment 😉 Working from home, in a sedentary job, I REALLY notice the difference in my body when I don’t exercise. It really is vital to keep me feeling my best.

6:30 pm: Another shower (yes, I love showers, they’re such a great chance to relax both body and mind). Then we’ll have a light dinner – usually some sort of big salad with plenty of protein.

7 pm: I’ll either hop on the computer and do some more work – like writing a blog post or two – or read a little more. Sometimes we’ll pull up an episode of something to watch on the TV.

11:30 ish: Time for bed and cuddles with our kitty-cat, Gobbolino. Though he’s kinda avoiding us right now, because it’s almost summer-time temperatures down here now!