Results Tank As You Accidentally Fly Off Course

I remember working from Mexico City a few months back.  My wife gets these business trips to different location every once in a while.  It was Mexico back in March.  Later this summer in August, she's headed for Washington DC for a week.

If you saw yesterday's article, you heard the second half of last year was really slow for me.  The dip in business led me to start thinking, "Maybe a job back in corporate is something I should consider."  Yesterday's article, "How Do I Fly So Far Off Course" discusses how I got caught up in my business day-to-day and didn't dedicated the time necessary to focus on sales and marketing.

This article, "Results Tank As You Accidentally Fly Off Course" refers to the flexibility I have now that I would give in if I did switch back to a corporate job.  A real positive about working for someone else is income you can count on.  That's what you get in exchanged for less flexibility and the potential upside longer term as my own business grows.

My wife and I have all our kids out of college. Everyone's off the payroll as we like to say.  We really enjoy traveling together.  We have friends in a lot of locations across the world and we like getting with them and learning about all these places.

I know if I was working a job, I wouldn't have been able to spend the time I spent in Mexico.  I mean I was working, but I was working from where I wanted to work.  The same is true about our trip to DC next month.    As long as I have a good Internet connection, I'm in business.  A few years back, we visited friends in Milan, Italy and I did the same thing.  I put in a few hours every morning to keep things moving back at home and in the afternoon and evening we were in beautiful Italy.

My daughter's entrepreneurship class asked me to speak to them.  I told them running your own business has the potential to give you flexibility.  I have plans this half of 2018 to further reduce my business' dependency on me.  You'll hear all about it as I release that new offering.  Running my own business has been the hardest thing I have ever done.  I work longer hours today than I have ever worked.  Customer demands are all that.

It does open up the possibility of a lot of freedom.

The key is, and that's my top priority now, to focus on 100% replacing myself in the business.  I don't have any immediate plans to replace myself as the sales and marketing machine for the business.  I plan to stay involved in defining customer solutions.  However, everything else is open game.  I want to make it so no one needs me for production work, delivery of solutions to clients and all the administrative work.

I still have a long way to go, but I'm starting to see glimpses of that freedom with my trip here to Mexico.  I can see making considerable strides this year.

Do me a favor and share with me your struggles running your own business.  Let me know the steps you've taken to get out of your own way so your business isn't so totally dependent on you.