The Four-Hour Work Week: Do You Believe It’s Possible?

(Well, I work more than four hours, but the point is, it doesn’t feel like work… read on)

I have been known to say, if your business feels like a job, it’s a sign you haven’t built it right. I can always tell when someone doesn’t believe me. They can’t conceive that it’s entirely possible to do the work you’re meant to do, love doing it, and build it around your life. Most people think of their earning  years as a means to an end, something to be endured and tolerated until the freedom of retirement.

I can honestly say that I’ve never had a bad day since I started my own business in 2007. When I look back at my corporate career, this astonishes me. I had many bad days – weeks, and month, even. When I first started my business, all I wanted was to earn enough to match my salary, and be able to set my own schedule. In those early days I hadn’t fully grasped what was possible.

I see this same pattern in many of my small business clients. It takes a while for the “corporate detox” to occur and I think for many of us, we’ll always be recovering employees.

The reality is that years of approaching work and productivity in a certain way has conditioned us to believe that work means getting as much as humanly possible done within a set number of hours in a week. Who says that your business day should feel like squeezing the last drop of precious water out of a sponge, as if your life depended on it?

One reason is that we simply haven’t experienced any other way. The other is that we may not have thought of the non-traditional ways we can be marketing and packaging what we have to offer to bring us the revenue we desire. Most corporate fugitives slide into their businesses doing the same kind of work they did in their careers, and the only change they make is that they’re collecting money in the form of a receivable, instead of a paycheck.

If either of these scenarios rings a bell for you, here is a three step process you can use.

1. Ask Yourself These Questions

When you wake up in the morning, are you excited, or do you feel a seeping anxiety?

Do you look forward to doing what you do with your clients, or do you feel it’s a chore?

When you have a project to do related to your business, do you procrastinate, or do you have to rein yourself in to stop from working on it?

How often do you feel true joy when you work? When do you feel like you’re in the zone, when you feel like you are doing EXACTLY what you’re good at and meant to do?

When was the last time you tried something completely new, and got really excited about it?

Explore this. All of these are clues about what’s working and what’s not for you. It’s your business and it doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

2. Envision Your Ideal Day

Play along with me and envision what your ideal day would look and feel like. What would you be spending your time on? What would be the ideal mix for you? For me, it includes lots of quiet time, lots of thinking and writing time spent on brainstorming and working on my own projects, spending some time connecting and keeping in touch with my network and clients, and one or two appointments either working with clients, or meeting with people who are interested in what I have to offer. This is broken up with lots of time outside and being with my daughter to get her to and from school without the bustle and chaos of my corporate style work week. This is the very reason I work with a limited number of clients, because I love working closely and really getting involved in their businesses. Your day might look similar or could be vastly contrasted. It might mean being in an office space, and not in a home. You might thrive on lots of meetings and faster pace, and love getting in front of groups or working with lots of people. When you do this step, it’s important not to rationalize and over think. Tune in to what you’d ideally like, not what you think is reasonable or possible in your current circumstances. Write it out beginning from how you feel when you wake up, through the entire day.

3. Take Inventory and Take the Next Step

Now that you’ve spent some time on this, look at the reality of your calendar and how you spend your time. If you see drastic differences, know that it is possible to do a makeover on your business. It all starts with baby steps so don’t feel discouraged. What matter is that you’ve become more aware of your ideal, and to begin to move in that direction. If you’re feeling great, then celebrate, and take the day off! After all, you’re the boss and CEO!

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Are You in the Wrong Business?

If you’ve left a career to start your own business, you’ve made what likely amounts to one of the biggest decisions of your life, next to getting married or divorced, or having children. That decision is not made lightly, I know. It’s a frightening yet exhilarating time when most people think you’re crazy, and you have moments where you wonder if they’re right!

Fast forward to a few years down the road. You’ve gotten past the early phase where your number one concern is getting clients and making enough money to make it worthwhile.

So you’ve made it past that point, and what happens next? You may feel as if you’ve fallen into a predictable routine, except that you can’t seem to break past the plateau you seem to be anchored upon. No amount of muscling through or trying umpteen new ways of doing things seems to work. You start to get tired of doing the same things with the same type of client.

I can describe this so clearly, because I hear this all of the time. And because I felt that way at times, when I mainly did corporate consulting in the early years of my business. You’ve basically built a business that starts to feel like the job you left. But you feel trapped because you’ve now invested your life, heart and soul into getting to this point.

If you feel this way, know that you aren’t trapped. In fact, you hold the keys to releasing yourself, and the good news is, the decision is usually nowhere near the scale of the major ones you’ve had to make up until now.

When I provide small business consulting services to people who find themselves at this point, I always go back to the basics. Here are some things we discuss together to explore whether the business needs a slight adjustment, or merits a complete redo:

• What matters most to you?
• Why did you want to start a business in the first place?
• Who do you like to work with?
• What do you love to do?
• What would you do all day to make you feel giddy at the thought of actually being paid for it?

This may seem a little soft coming from someone who specializes in diagnosing what’s working and what’s not in people’s businesses, and strategizing all areas of the business to make it work better. But here’s why I LOVE working with small business owners who want to design a business that feels good to them and makes money: they are emotionally invested in their businesses. This means there is little or no line between what makes the person tick, and what makes the business thrive. So before we can get to the hard core business and marketing strategies around target market, pricing and packaging, best marketing approaches, and the how-to’s of marketing and selling, we need to look inside first! This is where the magic begins (and it is also why I love working so closely with entrepreneurs).

So if you are feeling a little lost in the business you built, go back to some of the basics of you. Allow yourself to explore if the reason the business doesn’t fit may be because it was built on the old you. Starting your own business involves incredible personal growth and challenges you in ways you can’t imagine when you’re not there yet, so it’s 100% normal to feel as if you’ve outgrown your business. Once you get a handle on what’s missing, you can look to your business with a more honest perspective and see whether you want to adjust it or transition into something completely new. Most of the time, there are assets (such as your brand, your contact list, your network) that allow you to transition in a natural, evolutionary way, rather than a sudden severing. Make sure you don’t abandon what’s good without at least looking at it clearly, and if you lack the perspective on this, get an outside opinion.

Whatever you decide, remember that it’s your business and your life, and it is entirely possible to build it in a way that makes you money, and brings you much joy.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System™  for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.