Last week, I officially revamped my business, something that has been in the works for six months now. I’m shifting from working as a virtual assistant to becoming a full-time Online Business Manager. (Did I mention I’m also getting certified as an OBM which has taken a lot of my free time?) I now have a team of virtual assistants working with me to serve our clients. Plus, I’ve behind the scenes working on some crazy amazing things for all of you.

I’m also going through all the feels. Will my body hold up under the stress and extra work? What will happen if it takes a while to find OBM clients? Why would anyone even want to read what I have to say?

But then I remembered that I have all the skills I need because having a chronic illness is the best preparation you could ever have for being a spooniepreneur.

(I’m not joking.)

What I didn’t realize when I started my own business is that everyone feels inadequate. It doesn’t matter if you make a hundred dollars in a month or ten thousand–you still feel like someone else is doing it better.

In the beginning, I struggled so much. In the Facebook groups I frequented, it seemed like everyone was “booked out” after a month in business. Meanwhile in Ohio, the bills were adding up and my body was struggling to keep up with a new daily routine.

I quickly learned that those entrepreneurs were hustling working 50-60 hours a week and running themselves ragged. Onboarding several clients at the same time isn’t for the faint of heart…especially when your business is so young.

There was absolutely no way that I could use those methods to build my business as a spooniepreneur. But when I started applying the skills I learned to navigate chronic illness to my virtual assistant business, everything shifted.

Here are the three skills I use every day in life and business as a spooniepreneur:

Do what is right for YOU.

It’s so easy to get angry with my body. Any time I hop on social media I see my able-bodied friends doing amazing things that they probably take for granted, like swimming in the pool on a hot summer day.

The same is true with business. It’s so easy to compare your beginning to someone else’s middle. You look at other entrepreneurs who brag about earning six figures while working part-time and it’s easy to feel like a failure when you’re struggling to make ends meet while working 40 hours a week.

When you live with chronic illness, you’re granted the gift of being reminded every day that you are unique. Even if you have the same diagnosis as another person, chances are your symptoms are different. You might spend time every week at doctor’s appointments, therapy sessions, or having medical tests run. And I can bet that your daily routine doesn’t look like your able-bodied friend’s life.

But this also means that we’re really good at making it work no matter what life throws our way. It takes many entrepreneurs years to learn how to do this but we’ve already learned this one the hard way. When we can apply our resilient spirit to our businesses, there’s literally no stopping us.

Take it at your own pace.

It took me two years to build up the endurance to work full-time in my business. But I’ll be honest that there’s no way I could do this if I also had to get ready in the morning, commute to the office, or sit at a desk all day. There are moments I work from bed and others that there’s no way I can look at a computer screen.

Being an spooniepreneur allows you to have a life that’s flexible enough to take things at your own pace. What separates us from other small business owners is that we leverage this to find a way to get things done even when it’s hard. It’s really no different than pushing through the pain to do the laundry or to cook dinner. We find a way to do hard things because we have to.

Consistent action is all it takes.

The path toward success isn’t difficult. But it does require you to show up consistently. That’s why the smartest thing you can do as a spooniepreneur is to build a solid routine for yourself. Chances are that if you’re living with chronic illness you already know the benefits of consistency better than most. For many of us, if we aren’t consistently doing the things that make us feel the best we can, it’s impossible to do the most basic of tasks.

As I’ve built my business, I’ve made the conscious decision to show up every single day (in big or little ways depending on my energy levels). Choose one thing, work until you can check it off the list, and then move on. It adds up faster than you think.