Heading up a micro-business is a constant juggling act...

It's been a great week for a social being like me, but I must admit, I am rather exhausted.

When you are on your own in business, or have a small team like I do, then the operational responsibilities and business development are just as important as service delivery, but at certain times of the year it does feel like I am on a pendulum swinging back and forth between priorities, with Autumn definitely being the most demanding.

It's the time of year when there are lots of professional development events, as well as lots of business development events piercing my calendar. This week is a case in point.

Monday, was catch-up day after spending the previous Friday on a 7-hour, NED course. In the afternoon, I had a great chat with my website manager about some of the strategic changes I'd like to make. Having been in business for almost 18-months, lessons have been learned and I am getting more clarity about the type of business I want to grow and the message I want to share.

On Tuesday, I invested an hour with the Business Advisory community I am part of, listening to and being inspired by other accountants on their journey towards transforming their firms into advisory practices.

Wednesday was a whirlwind. An awesome day of conversations with like-minded local business owners at the Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce's annual B2B event at Duxford IWM. Surrounded by planes, I networked with new faces, caught up with some familiar ones and contributed to a discussion about "green growth" in the Cambridge economy.

On Thursday, the time away from my desk continued with an all-day event hosted by Huntingdon District Council. The speakers demonstrated how committed they are to creating a place where we can prosper as businesses and be proud of, as residents. The audience was equally inspirational with some really challenging questions and educational displays of the impact they are making, and I unexpectedly spent the breaks catching up with some people in my network that I really care about. Having spent the previous day at Duxford, I was having doubts about taking the time to attend another event, but I am really glad I didn't waiver. Once over, I went straight back to my office for my weekly zoom call with my fabulous freelance team. Thankfully, they had a more client-centric week than me and reported great progress.

This morning, I submitted a proposal to an awesome local charity, for a fully outsourced bookkeeping, management accounting and financial oversight service and this afternoon discussed a collaboration with a local tax adviser.

In amongst all this activity, I helped a charity client to recruit their new corporate partnerships lead, and signposted another charity that I haven't had any direct contact with for many years, to the ICAEW volunteering portal .

There was a smattering of accounting and advisory work during the week, and I managed to keep up with emails in the evenings and return calls on the hop.

So why I am telling you about my week? Sure, it's been a bit unusual, but that doesn't make it newsworthy.

Well, I feel that I have imparted good value, contributed to my community and made great strides in building my business - my positivity cup is overflowing. But this is unsustainable. A business that doesn't deliver on its promises to clients/customers is not a viable business.

So next week, the pendulum must swing back into focusing on clients.

Obviously, the ideal would be to have a mix of activities thoughout the week, maintaining energy levels and providing consistent progress with balance. I try to encourage this by time-blocking and colour-coding my calendar, but sometimes everything conspires against my plans and I need to simply go with the flow in order to maximise the opportunities that present themselves.

I am intrigued. I spend plenty of time helping business owners to be more efficient and to be accountable to their own plans, but this week proves that sometimes it's really quite difficult.

How do you balance the priorities of service delivery, day-to-day management, business development activities, personal development and integrating with your community?

Perhaps like me you are honing your juggling skills? Or perhaps you are able to accept that one or some of these elements are downplayed. I know plenty of successful businesses that don't do any marketing and are happy with slow, organic growth through focusing on providing an exemplary service - but often they tend to find themselves struggling to scale or innovate. That's absolutely fine if that's the business owners' goal. My impatience and appetite for implementing new technologies and methodologies doesn't give much respect for taking things easy, much to my coach's frustration.

What is your strategy?

Do you keep yourself accountable to it?

Do you allow yourself to go off the rails once in a while, in the name of prospecting? After all, you never know who you may meet and what opportunities may present themselves.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to when your business was 18-months old?

Sorry, far more questions than answers this week. Your esteemed knowledge and experience is welcomed.