Entrepreneurs Don’t Have Normal Lifestyles — Instead, They Design Their Own.
An entrepreneur has freedoms that an employee doesn’t have. On the other hand, an entrepreneur doesn’t get to go home and call it a day at 5:00 p.m.
“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.”
An entrepreneur’s lifestyle is not a “normal” one because, ultimately, you are your business. It’s a symbiotic relationship where the time you put in is what allows both you and your business to thrive, especially in the beginning. That’s a time when you’ll be at maximum hustle, wearing all the hats there are to wear. Some of these hats will fit, while others might be uncomfortable. Maybe you’re great at budgeting, but cold-calling customers gives you nightmares.
Never fear. You’ll figure it out — because you have to! At this stage of the game, anything that you aren’t willing to do simply won’t get done. What’s more, you’ll need to intimately understand each aspect of your business before you’re able to hire someone else to do it.
To make all of this possible, you’ll need to design a power routine, which allows you to tailor your life around your entrepreneurial strategy in a way that’s focused and productive. Here’s how.
For starters, you’ll need to work every day for an entire month. Putting in seven days a week for a month might not be easy, but it will give you the information you need. Note your big successes during this time, and write down the days and times when they occurred.
Next, categorize each of these successes as one of three things: strategic planning, internal operations or revenue generation. Working on your One-Paragraph Start-Up Plan is a strategic planning activity, for example, whereas contacting vendors is internal operations. Discussing a project with clients is, of course, revenue generation.
Now look at the successes and failures in your schedule. When did you do best in certain categories? When did your slow periods happen? Try to figure out why your productivity ebbed and flowed when it did; then tweak your schedule to capitalize on this. For example, if you’ve been successfully generating revenue from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Wednesdays, and Sunday afternoons are best for strategic planning, take advantage of this by locking it into your schedule.
Keep adjusting your power routine until you’re confident that it’s perfect. Then commit to your routine and stick to that commitment. That means that if Saturday afternoons are your sweet spot for successful internal operations work, then you’ll have to skip plans with friends that day. Your schedule is meant to revolve around maximum results for your business, not socializing.
Originally published at Learn More Knowledge on February 9, 2019.
