This will be a bit different than you first might expect. This is about lessons learned about not forgetting the people in your life…away from the office. As I read more and more about successful people they have managed to hold together their personal lives in various forms, and despite what the media appears to focus on, more successful people are happily married with children, then the multi-marriage-disaster we’ve come to expect.
While growing and forming your business is very, very critical — and is one of those: do what you have to do, so you can do what you want to do – sort of things. On the same part, sometimes we “want” to do work, and what we need to do is pour value and significance onto our families and friends. We will all pour so much into the office and our employees, who may betray us at some point — our families are forever, and we need to remember and treat them as such.
For each person, that attention and value can and will be expressed differently. For some it is coming home always at 4pm, for others if was when they got home (whatever hour) they were automatically, fully 100% devoted to their family, virtually ignoring the world; yet others it would take the form of occasional (but frequent) holidays and vacations – or perhaps “weekends with dad”. Whatever form suits you and your family, find it, and then live it — commit to it. Whatever it takes for you, if that is placing it on the calendar, or having your spouse “hound you” or having your secretary keep you on-top. Whatever it takes, it is vital. Your homelife will have a greater impact on your work, far beyond what you could ever imagine.
I just completed reviewing How To Manage Your Time and it included a list of great time management tips. All very valuable. What hit me the most was the last one: Closed door / open door. While we all try to keep an open door policy, it is important to have a closed door most of the time, at least physically. That way you can get the work done, and it shows that you are busy, working, being productive. Open the door when it is a good time – perhaps even schedule it (privately) — that is to set some times in your outlook calendar to remind you to open the door, but don’t let anyone know about that schedule, otherwise they’ll begin to count on it. But to make yourself available does not mean that you always need to be available.
Going hand-and-hand with spending money to save time, it is important to begin building your legal team before you find yourself in any specific need for them. That way, when a crisis or any other urgent need for a legal consult is needed, you already know who and how much it is going to cost. There is nothing worse then needing to terminate an employee ASAP, surrounding a sticky situation, and then turning to the phone book to sort through a bunch of people. By deciding to build you team in advance, you can perform you due diligence now with the luxury of time.
There is an adage which many company’s continually contend with: at points we will spend time to save money, at others spending money to save time… During various stages, typically during the early growth stage, we spend a lot of time, 60-70-80 hours per week, in order to save every penny possible. Later on, we learn and have the financial resources to spend money to save our valuable time. This goes back and fourth throughout every stage of a company’s existence.
The big lesson hear is to first acknowledge this principle and then decide how to best leverage this for your own business. Sometimes the right knowledge and expertise provided by a professional is worth more than 100 hours of personal research. So, spending money may actually be priceless.
