Many people say business owners have no life with the amount of hours they work. I’m here to tell you that’s BS lies! Working endless hours is a choice, not a mandate. I will share the most impactful method I found to work as a business owner without a compromise to work output.

First, let me describe how I used to work.

The Origins: The Subpar Way of Working

Over 6 years ago when I first started my business I worked day and night to ensure the business’s success. A normal phenomenon for almost every business owner. Every minute not spent on the business feels like a minute towards its potential demise and having to get a job again.

However, after that initial start period I noticed myself, and many other business owners I knew personally, continued to work long hours even when the business started to perform well.

I worked non-stop for around 6 years on my company. Even when we landed lucrative contracts with companies around Australia and the world I found it hard to hit the stop button. My dedication to the success of my business and the evasion of its potential demise led me to work non-stop like a crazy person.

Over the years I began to feel over worked, continually tired, acutely stressed, and mentally fatigued. Instead of listening to my body I kept the petal to the metal and refused to relent.

However, similar to a car, my fuel of passion and …

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I will share with you how I build my company everyday to survive for the long term and the importance of going……. slow. But first, we must speak about trees.

Did you know a tree can break under the weight of its own fruit?

Yes, a tree can overbear itself with more weight than it can handle and subsequently collapse. Not only a branch but I’m talking the whole damn tree.

I never knew about this phenomenon but searched it up after thinking about how I run my small business. I am obsessed about slow, meaningful, and long-term growth. Small and purposeful efforts where the business grows and bears more fruits slowly over a long duration.

The analogy of the tree collapsing under its own fruit hit me when a fellow business owner and long-term friend of mine told me about someone he knew that hired 2-3 team members. They hired these team members within a year of opening their services based business. For me that felt reckless to aggressively increase the head count of the team in the early stages of the business.

Why?

Because for me, in that situation I crunch the numbers. I quickly determine that to hire a new team member I must:

1. organise a job ad,
2. spend company resources interviewing,
3. accept I might not find a valid candidate,
4. ensure correct working rights,
5. speak with my lawyers to ensure I am compliant with Australian (super complex) law,
6. onboard a new team member,
7. perform …

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Back when I worked for the Australian Federal Government I read a book called Rework by Jason Fried and DHH. They presented ready-to-go implementable methods to work better in a team and as a business. It left a profound impact on me to this day where I arrange my business around several of those methods.

As a junior-fresh-out-of-uni working for the Australian Government, I met with my manager every week in a fixed meeting that drained my soul. Week by week nothing changed in a significant way, therefore the meeting consisted of nothing meaningful but instead it always led to a general chit chat. After I read the Rework book it presented a better method: daily write ups about what a team member worked on for a given day. This type of automatic check-in allows the whole team to receive situational awareness on what everyone else worked on, without the constant and redundant meetings.

I felt excited and brought it up with my manager. Back then I thought if I discovered a revolutionary idea to work better in a team then everyone would be super keen to implement it. I told him about the book I read, the method, and my idea to implement it for our team. I remember his face to this day: he nodded his head, said “wow, what a great idea”, and then progressed to say “I prefer meetings, but thanks”.

I felt shocked! He asked not one question about the method and automatically dismissed it …

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