It’s 9:30pm on a Monday night. My wife and I are both working. Why is it we always seem to be working too much? Here’s how to not do that…
I was recently at an internet marketing conference which was filled with people running small business online. Some claimed to be making large amounts of money online while working very few hours. Most were there with aspirations of doing so.
In the midst of this crowd of entrepreneurs and wannabes, I met someone who was a lot like me. He had spent his career in the corporate world but was intrigued by the digital space. We had lunch together and took stock of what we saw, trying to decipher the hype from the reality.
We weren’t sure whether the people claiming to be making $20,000 a month online were really doing so or not. We had our doubts, but we did know one thing… doing so as an employee almost always entails giving up nights, weekends and vacations to work.
It reminded me of a conversation with a client I had last week. The short story: great job, loves her clients, fantastic compensation and yet she is worried about slowly losing her family to 60-70 hour weeks. She is working too much.
The corporate world ensures working too much
At most companies, the 9-5 only exists for entry level positions. Everyone else is on salary and working a LOT more hours. I’m not going to lie, there was a point in time when I was making 6 figures and working 40 hours a week… it didn’t last.
Promotions happened that crushed my nice work schedule as my compensation went up. Even without the promotions, I’m not sure that position would have lasted long before someone realized I could be producing more.
Why? Because it is in the nature of companies to try and extract as much productive output as they can from each and every employee on the payroll. It is simply how the system is designed. Your productivity as an employee increases profits to shareholders. -And that is why the company exists. It is as simple as that.
Perks like foosball and flex hours only exist because some people believe they increase productivity over the long term. That’s it.
My point is this, if you are looking for high compensation and low hours worked, there is only one solution: entrepreneurship.
A 6 figure income without working too much
Wait what? Entrepreneurs work constantly: witness this 10:00 pm blog post on a Monday evening.
Yet the only people I know who have succeeded in having high pay and working few hours are entrepreneurs. Each of them worked very hard to get their business going and then put it on autopilot rather than continuing to push for growth.
One invested in real estate, one is a financial advisor, and one is a consultant. In each case they worked extremely hard to grow a business and then made a very clear lifestyle decision. They decided that rather than continue to work too much they would take more time off and spend it with their families.
So how do you have it all?
Making the jump into entrepreneurship is never easy. On the other hand, there is no time like the present. I mean that in two ways: 1) it is easy to put off entrepreneurial dreams forever as you wait for the timing to be perfect and 2) it is a really unique time in history for starting a business.
Today you can have a company with an international presence with very little expense. The internet makes finding staff easy and inexpensive (I have a team with members in Canada, Greece, Egypt, San Diego and Chicago).
Tools that used to require custom programming can now be utilized with no coding knowledge and often for $10 a month or so.
In other words, there is no time like the present to get started in the entrepreneurial journey and it can often be done before leaving the corporate world.
So get after it and make a change… because you know what more of the same will bring.