Do work you love
As I was driving to the “Do Work You Love” breakfast in Sofia the other day, I was thinking about choices and sacrifices we have to make as entrepreneurs in order to be successful and push our companies forward. At our office where the event was held, I was going to meet some new people and was hoping the meeting will be as entertaining as it was the last time.
It was one of the many mornings I had to make a choice between the business and my family.
I could have had breakfast with my wife and kids at home instead of being in the office at 7:00 AM. But this is just an example for setting priorities and managing time. The main difference between the good manager and the bad manager is the ability to control and manage resources. And the most precious and limited resource for everyone, not just for entrepreneurs, is time. We all have 24 hours per day which we need to distribute between work, family and taking care of ourselves – that includes getting enough sleep, proper nutrition and some physical activity in order to be productive.
But here comes the tough part
if you want to reach higher goals and achieve more success with your company, you have to spend much more time working. For people like me who have families and children, it’s a difficult job to keep the balance between family and career.
Most precious and limited resource for everyone, not just for entrepreneurs, is time.
This is the life on an entrepreneur.
The business world is extremely competitive and it sucks you in – you know that every minute spent there might save you weeks afterwards or might keep you from going bankrupt … At the end it all comes down to results so you do your best to get good ones. You’re constantly thinking about how to develop your company, how to mitigate risks and how to increase your profit and image with potential and existing customers. The reason behind all that hard work is simply to survive and push forward because the business world is constantly changing. And if you are not flexible and are unable to adapt you just fall off the wagon.
The only constant in life is change and you don’t have much time to adapt. That’s why you need to build strategic structures, company culture and systems that will allow your company to be as flexible as possible and to be able to overcome major obstacles that come along the way. It’s a tough decision to invest in strategical activities over daily tasks. It is hard not to take care of operational activities, which might bring you higher profit in short term, in order to pursue sustainability and long-term success.
So it’s really hard to not invest your time in your business.
You have to live outside your comfort zone and cope with thoughts of doubt. You might find asking yourself questions like: “Am I doing the right thing?”; “Am I doing it at the right time?”; “Am I doing it with the right tools?”; “Is it right to leave my kids at home without saying “Good morning”?”; “Is it right that I am attending this event instead of writing mails to customers?”; etc. This doubt is quite stressful, of course, but the key to move forward is to not regret the decisions and choices you’ve made. Essential abilities you have to develop are learning from past mistakes and using those lessons later.
I believe everything happens for a reason and you can always take away something useful from every situation.
Learn to experiment constantly and not to regret when you do not get the result you expected. “Failing fast”, learning the lesson, getting up and moving forward is essential for growing your business.
At the end it all boils down to developing skills
to manage your time, to prioritize, to adapt and to learn.
As smart people used to say “you will either win the battle or you will win a lesson” – there is no loss in this game.
You can leave comments or contact me via e-mail or social media.
My goal here is to establish an honest, helpful and open communication.
Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
