For me, the biggest benefit has been freedom.
The freedom to play golf, meet a friend, spend time with family or simply have a day off, arranging the working day around my life rather than the other way around.
Ive just completed four months back in the business full-time, and it has been a whirlwind.
One of the first things I noticed after leaving organisational life was the silence.
I genuinely thought my phone might be broken! For the first time in years I wasn’t being bombarded all day with calls, messages and emails. That constant sense of being pulled in ten different directions had disappeared, and it felt like an enormous pressure release.
Then there were the meetings, or rather the lack of them.Towards the end of my previous role, I was averaging around 24 hours of meetings in a 37.5 hour working week. That didn’t leave much time to do the work those meetings inevitably created, and meant that often I was doing nearer 50-60 hour working weeks to keep up.
Working for yourself brings a different kind of pressure. There are of course uncertainties, setbacks and plenty of swings and roundabouts.
But despite what some LinkedIn posts might suggest, success doesn’t have to mean working 27 hours a day, 8 days a week.
For me, the biggest benefit has been freedom.
The freedom to play golf, meet a friend, spend time with family or simply have a day off, arranging the working day around my life rather than the other way around.
I rarely work weekends if I can help it. If I take some time out during the week, I might catch up one evening, but that is my choice. It isn’t forced overtime or somebody else controlling my diary.
The work still gets done. The business continues to grow. But life no longer has to wait until the weekend.
Four months in, that sense of control over my own time has probably been the most liberating part of all.
Success looks different to everyone. Increasingly, mine looks like having a business that supports my life, not a life that is completely consumed by the business.
