Often, we’re left at the end of a month wondering where the last few weeks went. Or we’re wishing we had just a few more hours in a day in order to squeeze in all our tasks, assignments, projects, and passions. There just never seems to be enough time. But some of us seem to have a knack for getting the absolute most of the time that is given to us.

For Michelle, a creative business owner, soon-to-be-bride, and dog-mom of two, if she didn’t already have that time management talent, she probably learned it from necessity.

Michelle is an online freelancer who, a few months ago, left her job as a financial analyst to leap into the waters of full-time self-employment. She runs a highly successful online service business. She manages multiple blogs for website owners, maintains staff writing positions, and handles social media for a variety of clients

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It’s a lot to juggle – yet before she left her full-time job as an employee, she managed to fit it all in and still found the time to dedicate to her loved ones. That includes her two adorable pups.

“We have two dogs,” Michelle says. “One is a French bulldog that we adopted from another family around 5 years ago – he didn’t fit well with their family – and he is the cutest thing ever. He is a runt and less than 15 pounds. Our other dog is a dog that we rescued around 7 years ago. We think she is a Boxer/Brittany mix.”

Her dogs have been with her the whole way as she’s worked to make what started as something on the side to an incredible livelihood. “I originally started with my blog, Making Sense of Cents. I created it to track how I was doing with my finances and my life in general,” Michelle explains.

She quickly realized that several of her fellow personal finance bloggers were working side jobs to earn extra money on top of their regular incomes. She joined the ranks of the side hustlers, and success soon followed. “I was making more than I was at my day job – and I also loved what I was doing around 1,000 times more. I eventually decided to make the switch to full-time freelancing, and I haven’t looked back.”

Now that she’s a full-time freelancer, Michelle is able to devote all her efforts to her online clients as well as her own websites. One of her favorite aspects of her new career? She says the ability to have her own, flexible schedule is a huge plus. “I can do the things that I want, when I want to. I don’t have to be tied down to a 8 to 5 job!”

Often, that translates to more time to spend with her dogs. “My dogs definitely help inspire me. They give me a nice little break all the time to just love them and play with them, and they give me a lot of motivation to keep on working. Their happy faces just always make me so happy. Seeing them puts me in an automatic awesome mood,” Michelle explains – and that’s the absolute best thing for her booming business.

Photo Credit: Michelle/MakingSenseofCents