I sat through a presentation last night of a company called clockspot. This is a great success story out of Atlanta with a great product. The company was built amazingly by himself. The great part he will tell you is now he only works, 30 min a week. Yes, that’s 2 hours a month. For me this just isn’t what I want to do. I would go Crazy!
Your thinking with all that free time I could, wash the car, go to Hawaii, hike K2, or swim across the Atlantic. You can do what ever you want with that time, and I want to work. Crazy, I know. If I am not working for someone, I am working for myself, or working on my house, or working to come up with something to work on. Its called ADD, and yes I have it too. Why is “Work” such a 4 letter word. I was raised on a farm with a father who was a shop teacher. Work is what I was taught to love as a kid, because I had no other options. If you were not working in a shop, you were working outside, or working on some way to get out of work to go have some fun. Either way your always “Working” and it is not bad.
Here is my idea, first off what he calls “Work” are things he doesn’t want to do. So I really have no idea how much time he puts into his business. I love to work on my businesses and if that is not “work” because I love it then I guess I only “work” 1 hour a week. But really, I have to say I get depressed if I am not working all the time. Don’t take this to literally I also love to sit my ass on the couch and watch TV, when I am done working. Granted I love to do things other than work, and I have a life. But the fact is I am built to be an over achiever, I feel like I am wasting life if I am not working to better, myself, my business, or the life I have.
So if I was only working 2 hours a month, I would just solve that by starting another business, or finding someone else to work for, and then go back to working the normal 80 hours a week. Oh and those of you who are married, with children who are reading this it is obvious I am neither. My views on time might change when those days come. Lastly Jason Ho said, “Check out my new product” which means he works 2 hours a month on ClockSpot and then puts in 80 more on his other ideas. So if you want to make it learn 80 hours is the norm, and love what you do, or you whole life will be “Work” in theh 4 letter sense.
That’s pretty amazing he’s spending just 30 minutes/week on the business - incredible actually.
I also think it’s far, far, from the norm, especially for startups. One my favorite startup books is Founders At Work, and while every startup is different, a common thread is that you’ve got to be passionate and love your business - and if that’s true, you’ll be spending quite a bit of time on it because you love doing it.
Good post!
I think it’s a disservice to the startup community to spread the idea that you can be successful with 30 minutes of work per week, then redefine work as you see fit. If you’re writing code, answering support requests, doing promotion/marketing/evangelizing, or anything related to your startup, that’s work, even if you enjoy it. It’s a wonderful thing to love your work, but it’s not the same thing as doing no work at all.