We’ve all seen it…the pyramid of production. It’s usually directed at a buyer but let’s use it for a business owner.
As a business owner each choice has a repercussion (good or bad). You can sell cheap and good, but you can’t deliver it fast. Choose good and fast, but you cannot choose cheap. These are repercussions of your decisions.
Every business owner makes dozens or hundreds of small decisions every day.
You choose to hire employees, choose to engage with a client, choose your hourly rate, choose your schedule, open hours and deadlines. All these decisions build and create your lifestyle as a business owner.
Instead of being picky with your clients, you can choose to work with all of them and build a large list of clients. You’re choosing to accept any project with money, no matter if the project is boring and the client rude. With that decision you’re choosing to hire and build a large team and work on projects you’re not really excited about, but hey…all these employees will make you feel confident and powerful. Realize you’re choosing to have the problems of scaling a service business.
You could choose to have a small amount of clients and fewer employees. You’re choosing to be a boutique service business. You’re choosing to solve the problem of building your industry authority/prowess in your target customer’s path. To be selective with your clients you’ll need to be a highly trusted service business in this industry. It also feels really good to say “we’re very picky who we work with…”. You’re choosing the path of a boutique service business.
You could choose to take every Friday off, you’re choosing to force yourself to learn how to prioritize your tasks. You’re choosing the possibility to feel guilty about not accomplishing everything you need during Monday – Thursday. You’re choosing to train/teach your employees how to run Fridays when you’re not around. You’re choosing not to take phone calls and meetings on Friday. The added bonus is feeling smug about taking Fridays off when your industry peers work. #fourdayworkweek
A company is built on 10,000 small decisions, be conscious of the repercussions of your decisions.
If you wanted it to build a product you’d find a way to get time to work on it. If you really wanted to start that new hobby you’d sacrifice something to find the time and money to do it.
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