It’s a construction company. Started a year ago, finally starting to get into the black. But I’m working 7 days a week now and constantly am thinking about it or on the phone or at work and my wife is starting to get irritated with me for it.
It’s a construction company. Started a year ago, finally starting to get into the black. But I’m working 7 days a week now and constantly am thinking about it or on the phone or at work and my wife is starting to get irritated with me for it.
try to draw boundaries, times/places when yould not work and times/places you woould, so that you form habits. Also, see if you need to hire someone to split some work, there is a possibility that some parts of your work that you spend a lot of time doing, you may even be doing them suboptimaly, so get some one who can do that, but better. This will reduce profitability, but you gain back something more important - time - try not to waste that, spend some more time with your loved ones, and when you are doing better emotionally and physically, you would also be able to think better on how to gain back those profits.
Also a general business advice - try to always be profitable - this may mean many things, you have to figure that out - consider the total amount of assets, time, and money of your team, and only make bets which are sustainable. Try to grow slow, but never aim for so high, that you keep stabbing your pinky on corners - that would be attrition and losses. Avoiding them would give you a better overall time.
Yeah the plan is when I get a good buffer in the business account to hire another couple guys and have another crew, but the issue is I need to hire a foreman I actually trust. I have many friends in the trades I’ve accrued over the years and I have a few guys in mind who are interested, but I need to have enough work rolling in to justify it and a big buffer in the bank as well. But I am trying to move in that direction, the plan is absolutely not to work 7 days a week for the rest of my life. Thanks dad!
Another thing that I can tell you, if you are hiring, don’t hire friends, it potentially reduces your friendship to transactions, and also reduces your off time (you may even discuss business in off time) find new people, maybe even make new friends. I am not principally opposed to hiring friends, and it is a good thing if you are expecting good times, you will cherish them, but in failure, you may devalue your firendship.
You are always free to ask anything, Best of luck.
So here arises the issue. How do I find someone to hire to run crews or do management stuff that I can trust, but they cannot be a friend of mine? This is where I struggle with making my next move for my business.
yo can still hire people without necessarily giving them complete responsibility. You have to be clear - are you looking for someone to be a cofounder (or someone with huge amount of say in your company) or as a regular employee. From what you have written I am assuminng you are looking for a managerial position (so possibly large say). In this case, I would say is try to find someone you are atleast aquaintance with, maybe a old school or college mate with shared interest, It can also help rekindle old friendships. You can definitely have a close friend onboard, but make sure they are close enough that any small work space shit will not hamper relations.
Those bondries are important. I don’t have a company of my own, but I still feel the need to separate work from the rest of my life.
When I got my work phone, I had the opportunity to make it my only phone. That could have been convenient, but I decided to keep my work hardware separate from everything else. Carrying two phones can be annoying, but I think it’s worth it. Besides, usually it’s enough to carry just one of them.
Now that it’s Sunday, the only reason for me the even touch my work laptop is to move it out of the way if I need the space for something else. The only reason for me to touch my work phone is to check the battery. It’s in power saving, so it can handle 2 days without any issues. Probably didn’t even need to check that today.
Also, the desk of my home-office is a dedicated work area, so work doesn’t happen anywhere else. When I sit in front of it, I’m in work mode. When I leave the desk, my mind automatically switches to chill out mode.