Business owners often work long hours, seven days a week, nights, weekends and even on holidays. They work for years without a vacation and invest everything into their businesses. If they are successful, they create jobs for other people and help sustain our economy. Is that the secret to running a successful business?
At SCORE, we talk to literally hundreds of business owners every year in Southern Arizona. Some business owners are struggling, while other owners are extremely successful.
We at SCORE have found that the most successful business owners are working fewer hours and actually getting more done. They take time off to go on vacation, spend time with their families and pursue their passions, while their counterparts are slaving away, spending 70 hours a week working in their businesses.
How is this possible? Consider this analogy from a recent Tucson Business Club blog:
βImagine you are a lumberjack, swinging your axe at the base of a large tree. With every swing, a chip of wood falls into a pile at the base of the tree. As the swings continue, the chips get a bit smaller, but they continue to fall. Each swing dulls the axe a bit and the chips get smaller and smaller. You can keep swinging harder and harder and maybe eventually the tree will fall. ... Or you can stop swinging for a minute, take some time to sharpen the axe, and then get back to work. If you take time to sharpen the axe, you will cut down more trees, in less time.β
Try something different in 2016: Schedule time away from your business. Spend that time doing what you love to do, and when you come back to work, your attitude, your focus and your productivity will all be better.
If you have the kind of business that revolves around you, and there is no way you could possibly take time off, you have a job, not a business.
