Life as an entrepreneur isn’t always roses! Balancing life, friends, and clients is tough. While I love owning a biz (make that two), the truth is I’m up working past midnight almost every night.

Running your #sidehustle requires determination and LOTS of hard work. If you want to be a #girlboss, you’ll need to learn the art of saying no. It’s never easy, but while my friends are having GNO and frolicking about town — I’m usually at home working on my laptop.

Finding balance in the entrepreneurial world is key. There’s not enough room for everything so the choice is yours — social life + success + sleep {but you can only pick two!} You’ve got to figure out what matters most, be intentional with your time and make those things priorities.

While I’m obsessed with my life and wouldn’t change it for anything — work never stops. Ever. Not even on vacation. Or while you’re sick. Or even when you’re on a mission trip in Africa. Entrepreneurs work 24/7. No one told me that. You hear the perks of making your own schedule and sleeping until noon, but the reality is that you have to be on your A-game at all times.

You can’t miss a single opportunity because it could be the one you’ve been working tirelessly for. But believe me, when failure isn’t an option, you’ll do whatever it takes to make your dream come true!

#HTS

Entrepreneurship is trending these days. In our post-Zuckerberg, Unicorn-abundant world, starting one’s own business to pursue our passions feels de rigueur.

In this world, authenticity drives (and sometimes trumps) aspiration, personal and business branding aren’t mutually exclusive, and community comes before corporate culture.

And the umbrella under which all these truths can exist? Entrepreneurship.

People perceive entrepreneurship as liberation from a constrictive 9-to-5 or a way to express one’s creative self. As a freshly minted entrepreneur, I agree that entrepreneurship can, in fact, serve this purpose.

For me and my business partner Rosario Chozas, our entrepreneurial umbrella is Bammies, a fashion brand that elevates the style of comfort in order to: 1) Minimize decision fatigue for women who need to quickly and aptly dress for various appointments in one day; and 2) Help women use fashion to feel comfortable in their own skin.

Hands down, this is my dream job.

But, like anything, there’s a reality behind the entrepreneurial dream. We learn what we know and think we understand of the entrepreneurial experience via the stories we absorb from various channels, both on and offline- social media, word of mouth, and more.

A brand story (and by extension, the story of its founders or team) exists across all platforms: in the media, on its website, mobile ads, and more. Much like your friend’s FOMO-inducing, highly filtered Instagram feed, a brand story is controlled.

Usually most of what you see, even the #BTS stuff, are the highs. Or even the mediums that we rework to look like highs. You know, the wins, the successes, the media applause, public acceptance, and the like. (The media also like to make spectacle of a brand’s lows, too, if they’re available.)

After all, drama sells, positive public opinion is paramount, and by motivating viewers to live in comparison, a brand creates conversions.

And so we absorb stories about entrepreneurs that go a little something like this:

• They’re doing something they love

• They don’t have to go to an office

• They don’t have set timelines

• They can wear whatever they want

• They don’t have to deal with a bad boss or nasty coworkers

• They are important

• Freedom

• Success

• Easy

• Money. Lots of it. (Or at least more than you’re currently making.)

Don’t get me wrong, many of these are part of the actual experience and can be pretty freaking awesome.

But let’s get real.

In entrepreneurship, the “office” becomes a coffee shop, co-working space, or expertly appointed apartment. Timelines still very much exist. You either have to set them yourselves (hello, self-discipline!), or they are dictated by your clients, customers or partners. And you’ve traded in one responsibility for another (albeit one that’s more aligned with who you truly are, but it’s still responsibility).

Obviously we enjoy the “wear whatever you want” aspect, but we’ve also deliberately created a clothing line that allows women to dress stylishly, comfortably, and easily for professional appointments and beyond, whether you work from home or not.

Because we’re in the business of helping women develop a personal style that makes them feel comfortable, we try to be as transparent about our process as possible. Here are parts of our story that can’t always be captured on our Instagram feed:

• Caring so hard about your business, customer or passion that nothing else matters.

• The consistent internal conflict between the pressure to succeed as defined by others versus succeeding on your own terms.

• Having to manage triage with no guidelines. Getting a business off the ground is much like running a popular ER in downtown Chicago on Thanksgiving. When you’re a first-year. And there’s no Chief Resident: You’ve got limited resources. You don’t know what problem to address first. You feel as if someone else will know how to handle the situation better than you, but they’re not in the trenches with you. Sure, you can have a mentor or advisor to help guide, you but their experience will never be EXACTLY the same situation as what you’re going through. What you have to navigate is never the same day in and day out. So you throw on the gloves and dive in with the solid knowledge that you have and figure it out as you go, much like those who came before you did.

• Self doubt.

• A continuous cycle of expansion and contraction, on both personal and business levels. (And that ish is exhausting.)

• Pivoting. Pivoting. Pivoting.

• Trust. Trust that it’s all going to work out.

About Julia Ford-Carther

Julia Ford-Carther, along with Rosario Chozas, co-founded Bammies [business + jammies], a contemporary women’s fashion brand dedicated to elevating comfort and empowering women through style. Prior to Bammies, Julia spent 10 years in media, utilizing her editorial experience and Communications degree from Stanford University to create lifestyle content for brands and publications such as Allure magazine, Ocean Drive magazine, Huffington Post, Lacoste, NBC, Shop Spring, W Hotels, and more. She has been featured in various outlets including Ebony magazine, Mashable, Racked Miami, Fast Company’s CoDesign, Entrepreneur, and Fox & Friends. For more from Bammies, visit www.bammies.life or follow @bammies.life on Instagram.

It has been almost a year since I last posted an article on Wish Dish and there’s been a bit of change since then. If you haven’t had a chance to read my first article please do so before continuing with this one. You can find it here: http://thewishdish.com/she-did-it-her-way/

In life, some people are where they are at by mere chance. They leave it up to others to decide their fate. They lack true direction or desire. They avoid making a decision for fear of making the wrong decision, so they make no decision. They wait for things to come to them instead of going after them, especially when their vision is unclear or unknown.

I know this because I was that person 6 months following my first article in December 2015. I was (and still am to some extent which I’ll explain later) an independent consultant who traveled the globe delivering sales, leadership development and employee engagement training to large organizations. I made good money, earned miles every time I flew that has allowed me to travel to other countries for less than $150 for a found trip ticket and did I mention that I enjoyed doing the work I did? In the midst of all this I noticed something. I was comfortable.

In addition to independent consulting I had this side project or maybe you could call it a hobby, I hosted a podcast called She Did It Her Way that was gaining traction but not growing. In my head at the time I thought, “But that’s okay,” because at the time I wasn’t truly focused on it. It was until the past three months that it has become my full time focus.

The first six months of this year I convinced myself that I could grow my consulting practice and She Did It Her Way at the same time.

Wrong.

I had to chose.

Because where your focus goes, your energy flows and results show.

This is where it got tough but to be completely honest, I made it more tough than it needed to be. Had I listened to my gut sooner I would have made this decision at the beginning of the year versus waiting so long.

Why did I wait?

Because I didn’t want to chose. I wanted both worlds: successful consulting company and a full functioning podcast (that would eventually turn into a full on brand).

I had one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat. Sooner or later I would fall into the water, not stabilizing my two feet on any ground. It was like the time when I was at Target and I kept going back and forth if I was leaving or not. It wasn’t until I made the decision to leave that opportunities started showing up.

It wasn’t until I decided to put all my effort into She Did It Her Way that things started happening. In the past few months alone I’ve gotten closer to the brand, the business and more importantly, the listeners.

You can’t work on your business until you know your business. And you can’t know your business without being in your business.

Do I still take on consulting projects, you betcha! As every entrepreneur knows there will be days, weeks, months even years where in the beginning, your business won’t bring in revenue to sustain your personal need of income so you go out and work other jobs to support you. Needless to say the days I’m working a project are a bit longer because I still put time in for She Did It Her Way.

You don’t sign up for entrepreneurship because you want to work from home, think it’s an attractive title or because you think it would be fun or even better because you’ll be wealthy.

You chose entrepreneurship for the love of the journey.

You chose entrepreneurship because you love solving problems. You chose entrepreneurship because you believe in something so much you’re willing to devote all your time and energy to it for long periods of time when you feel nothing is happening but you keep telling yourself by faith that there indeed is something happening, maybe yet unseen.

Everything I just shared and especially the last few paragraphs is what I continually tell myself on a daily basis.

Everything in life is a choice. Your attitude. Your life’s work. Your spouse. Your friends. Everything.

Don’t leave it up to chance. Chose.

I’m going to be perhaps a little too honest with you guys from the get-go. I never meant to start a business and I absolutely never considered myself to be an entrepreneur – that word alone scares the hell out of me. But here I am, writing this, trying to explain what it is exactly I hope to accomplish.

I’ve officially been out of the world of media – or should I say journalism since technically I still work in media – for about a year now.  It took me being approximately two weeks removed from the industry to realize that I missed it. Holy hell did I miss it.

Looking back, the 3 and half years I spent working in sports journalism were 3 of the most chaotic, challenging, frustrating, enthralling, and wonderful years of my life.  Good or bad – I wouldn’t change a single experience I had. Okay I maybe would have gotten in a few less Twitter fights and reacted quicker that time I got tackled on the sidelines (shout out to Ryan Switzer for my first concussion) but you get the point.  I would however, have appreciated it more.

The one issue I had with working in sports journalism however, was that I often times found it very limiting. I could only talk about certain things. I was only allowed to have an opinion on this, not that. I needed to “stay in my lane,” and after awhile it got too frustrating for me. I wanted to have a real voice, on real things and most importantly on my own terms.

So I started dijananotdiana.com (catchy title, I know) in hopes of getting my voice out there and showing fellow journalists they don’t have to be limited to one topic or field of journalism. Launching the website was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. In a world where everyone has an opinion on the Internet, I was terrified at the response I would get. And then … something weird happened. People were supportive, encouraging even, and they actually liked what I had to say. People read my articles and listened to my podcasts and suddenly I was a millionaire!

Yeah JK, that last part didn’t happen at all. I record my podcasts out of my closet. I write my articles after my 9-5 actual job and on weekends. I am one-woman team. Starting my own site was very liberating and exciting but it’s also a lot of work and pressure; mostly pressure that I put on myself. It’s a lot of pushing myself to the limit, giving up free time, and realizing it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

This is going to take time, patience and a lot of hard work – all of which you have to be willing to put in when it comes to being an entrepreneur.