Starting and running a small business is hard work. Forgot about 9 to 5 this is not a job. Success, in fact will be defined by working more hours than you dreamed possible and loving every minute of it.
You want to change the world? Not in 40 hours a week you’re not going too. My guess is you’ll spend 40 hours a week getting your customer facing work done. Then, another 20 to 40 hours a week growing your knowledge and doing all the behind the scenes work necessary to keep your business running. That’s right, 60 to 80 hours a week to get this baby cranking.
Work when your customers need you. Caller ID and a smartphone are your friend. When a customer contacts you before 9am or after 5pm …. respond as quickly as humanly possible. You are either matching the service of your competitor or differentiating yourself from competitors who leave them hanging until 9am the next business day.
Don’t waste time. Unless your driving the vehicle, travel time to and from customer sites is not play time it’s work time. Read a business book, prepare for the meeting you are attending, catchup on expensive reports of paperwork. The reason your friends think you are only working 20 hours a week is because you don’t gather around the water cooler four times a day to chat. I’ve written entire blog posts in the 30 minutes before a flight boards. The same thirty minutes several of my fellow passengers spent in the bar grabbing a beer. It’s a choice, your choice to use the time wisely.
Vacation is a twenty hour week. Perhaps I really am just a workaholic but for me being on vacation still means working 20 hours a week. I refuse to leave my customers hanging. I am capable of reading email once a day and responding. I bring along business reading to read when my head is clear and my schedule as well.
Work/Family balance. Like you had that when you couldn’t take off work for a ball game of school field trip? You didn’t, you had the illusion of balance. The flip side for a small business owner is the 2 or 3 hours of work that comes after the cub scout meeting. Yes, you will work your ass off and be dead tired….a lot. The key is if you love what you are doing none of it will bother you.
I’d love to see the comments on this post filled with input from the other small business owners I know read this blog. Please, back me up or let me know I’m all wet. Either is fine.
Jim, without being sarcastic or blunt….YES! To all. Well put.
I always love your honesty in your Blog and tweets. I just came back from vacation & I had a really good time, but yes I was reading emails, using travel time to read business books, and converting my new experiences into personal learning and Blogging ideas. One I just wrote on the brand names I noticed in Michigan that caught my eye can be read here: http://iam-bc.com/blog/do-these-brand-names-mak…
And like you said work never ends but its not a problem because I really love what I do. That being said I loved what I read in Paul Hawken's book, which I read on vacation. It was in the context of work never ending because of problems we need to tend to. His insight was that problems will never end, but what distinguishes a good company from a bad company is that in a good company the problems are energizing and every one involved wants to be a part of it. As small business owners if we can create the right kind of problems we are in good shape.
Other than that I breathe and meditate to stay present, because in the present there is no tension, only what needs to be done now…
Well said, Jim. The emphasis in your post, tho, is not the hours – it's the love of the work. If you don't love it, the hours would seem impossible and you'd resent the time spent. I'm sure your customers and your employees see it in you and your work.
Somehow I suspected we might agree on this 🙂
Loved the brand names post and how it's a derivative work of your vacation.
I do love what I do. I truly hope it shows with those I work with.
Nice post Jim. Although I don't agree with “When a customer contacts you before 9am or after 5pm …. respond as quickly as humanly possible”. Part of being a successful business owner, in my mind, is setting up ground rules for yourself.
I wrote about that in 'Building yourself as a successful brand' http://www.joshuagarity.com/life/building-yours… (May 23, 2010)
In the end, you could work 24 hours a day and still not be as hands on and productive as you want to be as a business owner. That is the main struggle. Finding a balance between personal life and running your business. Knowing when to 'turn off' business mode to focus completely on the life around you.
Unless we are talking about you and your wife. You guys read Twitter to each other in the car 🙂 Which is sweet. But you have achieved a different level of balance that many of us can't. Your empire is part of your life. And because of that, you are one of the special ones 🙂
For me “Humanly possible” includes recognition of when other things come first. If I am engaged with family or friends, I will respond when that event is concluded or at such time as it does not disrupt that event. Even between 9 and 5 if I am on a call with one customer the next one is going to have to wait until I can call them back. Sometimes that is hours. I could probably write a whole post about what I meant by humanly possible. 🙂
As for “balance” and “empire” I wrote about how that feels to me here: https://jimraffel.com/2010/01/11/the-personalpro…
As always, your words are too kind. I'm just another guy struggling to make this all work. Perhaps the difference, if there is any, is that I never quit. Success is the only road I have any plans to travel.
That makes perfect sense. Thanks for expanding on the humanly possible statement. I took it as a literal statement as opposed to thinking of it as a 'dependent on what I'm doing' type of statement.
Sold. I agree with you again 🙂 I will also take a look at your balance/empire article!
“Vacation is a twenty hour week.” Excellent 🙂
Ten would be better but it always seems to turn into twenty…. 😉