Not a full post as I'm out of town this week, as mentioned before last week's longer article.
There's a shift in one's frame of mind when one owns a business for oneself. When your time becomes your own and is much more proximately the cause of food-on-the-table, there's a greater tendency to resent the uncompensated loss of it.
This presumes that you want to be working on your business. How does that saying go? "Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life?" Well, running a store isn't quite there for me as I'd rather just write fiction full-time. But running a store is rewarding and fulfilling in a way that pushing paper for the government often was not, despite that my job with the state was important and that I had tremendous colleagues whom I deeply respect. It would take a significant compensation offer for me to consider going back.
Having said that, when something came up during my tenure working for an employer, I tended to roll with the punches pretty easily. Jury duty? All good, I'll move some calendar around and cash in some of the pinch-hitting favors I've done to cover for others. Power outage? Guess we're down for the count! Stuck waiting for a VIP to arrive? We wait, all the while earning our salaries. Traffic jam? Stressful if on the commute, but all in a day's work if during transportation in the course of services rendered. And in most of the jobs I've had, come five bells, work is over for the day. I work diligently while on the clock, but if I don't have skin in the game, my family time is my own.
It's different now. I try to squeeze productive output into every minute I can find. Jury duty? Can't possibly be impaneled, it would be highly distressing to the business. Power outage? Catastrophic! Even though we could still run sales with our iPad and mobile credit card rig, during most of the year in Arizona, you don't spend time in a building with no air conditioning, and neither would a customer. Stuck waiting for anyone? Time is money! Traffic jam? Complete waste of my prime productive hours! And work is 24/7/365. Even when I'm on vacation, I check in. I observe the emails, I reply sometimes, I keep tabs on social media, I even watch the cameras once or twice just to see how things are going.
Of course, in the long run, inconveniences pass. Even difficulties can be weathered. My approach to building up a resistance to such variables is to scale up, and then scale up some more. I won't fully relax until I'm at a level where my indefinite absence would cause absolutely no interruption in business.
This could take a while.
You have to make time for yourself and your family, otherwise, the business will consume you. You I've staff and team members that would support you. If they a tent sure how to do something, this gives you the opportunity to share that with others and build those skills for those interested. There is always someone interested. If you just check in, it could be perceived as a trust concern with your team or staff. The great part about time, as an owner, is you can literally make it by delegation. That may not have been your experience previously, but it really is an option.
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