Workaholic finds better way
Hi, I'm Pete Bowen.I made the same mistakes year after year in several different businesses. The harder I worked the more money I made but the less time I had to enjoy it.
- My mobile phone rang all day and often during the night. One evening it rang for the fifth time in ten minutes and I threw it against the wall, it hit the ground, broke into three pieces and then the shiny silver bit rang again.
- My health sucked. The only way I could fall asleep was by reading until my eyes burned and then I'd wake up worrying a few hours later anyway. Sometimes I'd be as sick as a dog and just rely on a combination of pain killers and Red Bull to see me through my usual 16 hours.
- My family didn't like me much. I was so stressed that I lost my temper for every little thing. I also missed too much of my little kids life - I left home at 03:30 the day after my youngest son Corbin was born, fell asleep while driving to a meeting eight hours away and crashed into a road sign. (Luckily for me I just dented the front of the car and didn't kill myself.)
- My marriage took strain. I'd get back from work in the early hours of the morning and find my lovely young wife asleep in a sexy outfit (and know exactly what she wanted) but just be too tired to care.
Everything changed after I bought a small run-down plant nursery in 2005
I hired a pair of expensive managers to run it for me. They knew plants, but they knew nothing about marketing, selling, maintenance and all the other jobs a business owner has to do.
I still had to spend hours every day doing stuff I was paying them for. And instead of paying for the land it stood on it was sucking money.
There was no choice - I fired the managers and moved my secretary into the nursery office and we started trying to run the business.
We knew nothing about plants or running a nursery so we had to ask about almost everything. And we wrote the answers down. Every single part of the business ended up on a checklist or instruction. It took several months and often we had to change something when we found a better way of doing it.
And even though we knew nothing about running a nursery we started to make money. But I was working like a slave. And feeling it!
But the secretary had to get back to her real job and I wasn't brave enough to risk expensive managers so we hired a 19 year old who had been a waitress at our tea garden. I showed her our checklists and she followed them and it seemed to be working.
I took time off.
The first Saturday morning off in 8 months to go surfing with my kids. I was away about 3 hours and I walked in expecting a disaster. Or at least to be noticed and asked some important questions! Business was running without me.
I started to take weekends off. I'd come back and find things working. Then I took three holidays in two months something I'd never done since working for myself. I'd get back and ask "Any problems?" and the answer would be "No."
I ended up doing only the marketing for two and a half days a month. And, if the owner is able to just focus on getting more business fun things happen.
We made money.
We didn't quite triple turnover in the 13 months I had the place - the last month's was 2,81 times the first months but on less fixed costs than when we started.
I had 41 people competing to buy the business and I eventually sold it for more than twice what I originally thought was a good price and rented the land to the new owner who is making money while keeping his day job.
Although it was a tiny business with only 7 employees, I learned what I couldn't from the hundreds of books that I'd read.
I learned the practical hands-on way of how we small business owners can:
- Build a business that runs with very little work from the owner
- Hire relatively cheap staff and still give great customer service
- Automate most of the marketing to give a constant stream of customers
- Hold staff accountable for their performance
- Have a pool of qualified buyers competing to purchase the business
Since then I've duplicated the systems we used, and many more to make it far quicker to get your business running without you having to be there every day.
If you haven't already done, so why don't you take a look at our e-course? It'll cost you nothing and the ideas will get you a whole lot closer to having a good business instead of a bad job.
Tell us where to send it and we'll do so right away.