Thrice as long, frice as hard, the ongoing entrepreneur journey

It's year six of SyndicateRoom being out of beta and I'm not yet retired. To be honest, I'm not yet back at the level of lifestyle that I had before starting the MBA before starting SyndicateRoom and it will still be a few years before we get there. But that's ok. Statistically speaking, SyndicateRoom has lasted longer than the average company, achieved more annual revenue than the average company, hired more people, and done many many things that the average company in the UK does not achieve. And, more than anything, we've learned a lot along the way and worked incredibly hard. There have been long hours, over nighters, over weekenders, coffee fuelled bursts of work, and the constant feeling that we needed to do more more more. But the truth, we needed to be smarter, not work harder.

There's been a big debate recently around the concept of "hustle porn" which Alexis Ohanian Sr. the incredible co-founder of reddit and Initialized Capital described at web summit as “This idea that unless you are suffering, grinding, working every hour of every day, you’re not working hard enough" and went on to declare as "one of the most toxic, dangerous things in tech right now” and I'm not sure where I sit on the subject.

When we started we were young in the ways of being entrepreneurs. We spent a lot of time learning what it was we did, what our customers wanted, and how to compete with those already in the market. Hours were pored into the business, a lot of them researching, learning, trying to play catch-up with the industry (the financial industry has been around a rather long time) and trying to force our brand into an already busy space. We didn't have the resources (human power, advertising budgets) as our competition but we did have a hunger and we believed we could overcome our perceived disadvantages by just working harder. Finding our feet and finding our voice were very hard to come by so we worked longer, harder, and as the business grew, right or wrong, we started to believe that hard work was the only way and pushed all of our team to work harder.

It's an unfortunate cycle that many entrepreneurs get themselves into. You assume that the hard work has led to the success so to get more success you must work harder. Then the success starts to slow down and instead of thinking that it's because you're working too hard you think you just have to work harder, and harder, and longer, and just don't stop.

First goes the Gym, then goes the pub, then goes most of the relationships you've been holding on to, and eventually there goes your health and your passion for what you're doing. One day I woke up and just felt like crap. Tired, sniffly, not hungry, not motivated. Don't get me wrong, I was not depressed, I just didn't want to work anymore. It was year three and I'd burned both ends of the candle (not specifically speaking about sleep) and I just didn't want to work that day. I tried to focus, knowing there were so many emails to reply to, so I opened the laptop, and then stared blankly at the inbox for what felt like an hour. Misfire. Walked to the coffee shop I sometimes worked from and ordered a cappuccino, sat down and as I sipped the coffee I waited for the jolt of caffeine to spur me on but nothing.

The next day was similar and so was the day after and all the way until the weekend. Usually weekends were spent, unsurprisingly, with the laptop in front of me. Not this one. I went outside with out it strapped to my back and just walked and kept walking. I wish I could say that whole walk was spent head up just taking everything in, but it wasn't. I mostly thought about work, what we were doing, why were doing it, and why after three and a bit years we weren't as far as we thought we'd be. I didn't arrive at a specific conclusion on that walk but it did get me thinking about the bigger picture and I tried to map out how things fit together, something I hadn't done in a long time - when you're in the zone and trying to work harder you don't always think if the work you're doing is the right work to be doing, you just think that you need to get it done.

At this point in time I finally woke up to the cliche, I needed to work smarter, not harder, or else I'd have a lot more of those days where I just sit around hating work. But while the cliche rolls off the tongue so easily, implementing it was/is a lot harder.

I. There's no such thing as balance

I don't think you can ever truly find balance, ultimately life is a series of trade-offs that you learn to accept. However, I do think that, as with most things, diversity is incredibly important and that's what you need to introduce. Work, health, play, and diversification within those three categories. For health, I was never a poor eater but missing out on the gym, football, and climbing took it's toll so I've now found time at lunch to get a workout in. Here too I focus, I've got an hour to get the gym in and eat so no time is wasted with a hard 25 min circuit to cover all the muscle groups.

II. Setting hard stop times

Over the years I've found that setting hard stop times is the best way to focus. Despite having roughly the same amount of work to get done now as we did when we started, when the clock hits 6, I'm out the door no matter what. Knowing that I have to stop focuses me more throughout the day and I find myself less distracted as the self-forced deadline is about to hit. When I leave the building I give myself a couple of hours of free time to just unwind. If something super important continues to infringe post shutting down I do go back to it but once it's done that's it. I still do get a few hours each day over the weekend but that's ok as I set the objectives for the weekend work before opening the laptop and stick to it. Focus focus focus.

III. Challenge everything

Why do you do what you do the way you do it. Too often habits are formed based on what has been done in the past by you or others. The only way to start working smarter is to start asking why, why, why, why, why. If you don't know why you do it, figure out by asking why five times. Once you get to the root reason for why you do what you do the way you do, you can start to find a better way.

IV. Let the others do their thing

Some will always want it more. Someone earlier in the game, maybe younger, maybe smarter, maybe comes from a better or worse of background. Someone will want it more and will be willing to work harder for it. Can you continually up your effort to stay ahead? Maybe, maybe not. But, you focus your effort on finding the better way, the new pool of customer, the more cost efficient production, the faster time to market, the better customer experience. Tim Ferris has achieved a lot with his four hour work week, imagine what you can achieve with forty.

As always, these are working documents so do share your thoughts, feedback, suggestions and take a look at what we're building at SyndicateRoom