The lovers, friends, parents, and others who throw around the workaholic label secretly resent their own “stuckedness” and try to make themselves feel better by attacking you, by making you feel guilty or odd.
We could dismiss the critics as jealous, resentful, and unreasonable just as easily as they label us as workaholics. However, no one wants to go through life married only to a business in general. We need mates, family, and close friends. And they won’t all be involved in our businesses or even in business. We don’t get to choose our families and, besides, some diversity in social life is healthy and necessary. So, better understanding of ourselves and others, recognition of the special problem we present to others, and creative efforts at preserving relationships are all very important.
The Blurred Line
One of the ultimate object lessons in this is Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, and all the other Virgin companies and brands. He told Fortune magazine: “I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.”
The typical entrepreneur is constantly initiating new projects, even new businesses, to justify the long day, to keep the game alive. They are not just motivated by desirable end results; they’re equally motivated by the enjoyment and thrill they derive from the whole process of business. They love the “action.” If this is workaholism, I’m guilty.
But, also, thanks to divorces, aging, long conversations with wiser people, and many other factors, I’m developing an appreciation for balancing that passion with other passions, so that I’m less guilty. And I’ve discovered a very odd secret. A difficult one for everybody raised on “work ethic” like me, but here it is: out-working everybody else on the planet is NOT the best path to success as an entrepreneur. As a matter of fact, figuring out how to work less—if focused on highest value and highest yield work—is far more useful. Over the past ten years, I’ve been systematically shedding businesses and responsibilities, cutting back on involvements, each year warning my CPA and tax advisor to anticipate a significant drop in my earnings. But the opposite has occurred.
Dan Kennedy’s Eternal Truth #2
If it’s work,
it won’t make you rich.
My Platinum Inner Circle Member and client Ron LeGrand has this saying:
The Less I Do,
The More I Make
Ron is a hugely successful real estate investor and entrepreneur, juggling literally hundreds of projects.
You have to be very careful about how you interpret this particular adage. You can’t take it literally, cut your work hours in half, sleep in a hammock, and expect your income to leap up. But there are many applications of this idea that work brilliantly. For example, the less you do that others could do, thus the more you do that only you can do, the more you make. Or, the less you do that feels too much like uninteresting, unfulfilling work and the more you do that feels like fun, the more you make.
Succeeding in business is a real magic trick. Succeeding in business and having a good life is an even greater, more challenging, more worthwhile trick. Since anything and everything is possible for the determined person, why not set your sights on the very best?
Some entrepreneurs manage to involve those close to them in their work-absorbed behavior. Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza, gratefully tells of his wife’s patience when he would always choose a pizza joint to check out whenever they were traveling or on vacation. Some fortunate couples share the same entrepreneurial passion and have that work for them.
But what if you’re making the big transition from employee to entrepreneur with a spouse who is happy with your old behavior? Or what if you’re involved with someone who cannot survive in a relationship dominated by your entrepreneurial passion?
Some of these relationships end. If yours is to survive, you need to be very aware of the strain that your new entrepreneurial personality, passion, and lifestyle is going to create and take proactive, preventive steps to make up for it, then hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
PERCEPTION: You’re a Wild-Eyed Risk Taker, a Riverboat Gambler. Have You Lost Your Mind?
One of the things that frightens many people and their loved ones about choosing the entrepreneurial lifestyle is the risk. It’s interesting that our society chooses the cautious “be careful” as a means of saying goodbye to a friend. We don’t say “be successful” or “be happy,” we say, “be careful.”
The true entrepreneur prefers to be adventurous and “fail forward” all the time. Running a business is a risk, but it needn’t be foolhardy. I rarely make a decision without considering everything from the best-case scenario to the worst-case scenario. I try to expect the best and insure against the worst.
Most people see things as black or white: someone is either the meek and mild Clark Kent or the strong and daring Superman. They try to see themselves instantly turning from Kent to Superman and have understandable difficulty conceiving and believing in such a miraculous transition.
Such dramatic overnight makeovers rarely occur. People grow into and with their new roles. You can start from where you are and grow to where you want to be. Anxiety about the risks inherent in business is natural. But the real objective of the entrepreneur is to manage risk, not to take risk.
Everybody manages risk every day. For example, statistics indicate that the risk of having a home fire during a lifetime is very high. Some people sensibly manage this risk by installing smoke and heat detectors, checking the batteries periodically, keeping an escape ladder in the hall closet, devising and rehearsing an escape plan with the kids, having surge protectors for major appliances, and so on. This is thorough risk management.
Other people just install a smoke detector and forget about it. They are managing the risk to a lesser degree.
Still others do nothing at all. They take the risk.
The successful entrepreneur deals with carefully calculated, measured risk. He demands accurate, complete information from associates and advisers and welcomes input and ideas from credible sources. But he also knows when to stop and avoid the paralysis of never-ending analysis.
There’s a balance between two little and too much caution. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, the wizard Gandalf offers Bilbo Baggins an opportunity to go on a great adventure with the potential of acquiring great riches at the end. Bilbo responds with his perspective on adventures: “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner.”
Somewhere between the extremes of unbridled risk and Bilbo’s total aversion to adventure you will find your balance as an entrepreneur. As you gradually develop that sense of balance as a risk manager and decision maker, you’ll find that you can function without much stress or anxiety.
As an aside, let me give you an important observation about how entrepreneurs get into trouble more often than not: failing to gather readily available information before making decisions and commitments. As a consultant, I can usually stump most clients with just three questions about the history of their planned business ventures. Very few people bother to do any homework. They merely have an idea and act on it, like a child grabbing candy from a grocery store shelf on impulse.
I’m unceasingly amazed at the people who start businesses without even studying the history of the industry they’ve chosen to enter. Far too many entrepreneurs fritter away far too much time needlessly inventing and experimenting when they could be implementing, because they don’t know much about