I was on a coaching call earlier this year with 30 professional services firm owners from all around the world with annual revenues ranging from $300k to $8 million. One of the owners shared with the group that they felt guilty for stepping back to working 4 days a week in the business. They felt like they weren’t contributing their fair share. They felt irresponsible. But it’s actually the opposite. Let me explain how.
The definition of a business is this: a profitable enterprise that runs without the owner. If you have anything else, call it what you want, but what you have is a job with some assistants.
My mentor Ed Chan taught me the value in getting out of Quad 1 – Urgent and Important (working in your business), and spending as much time as possible in Quad 2 – Not Urgent, but Important (working on your business).
How do you turn a job into a business? By working on it, not in it. If you’re a business owner and you’re not carving out at least 1 hour every day to work on your business instead of in it, you’re being irresponsible.
The most successful professional services firm owners I’ve worked with over the last 5 years have done two things:
They lived by their calendar
They scheduled Quad 2 time into their calendar every day.
Here’s the catch.
If you’re currently the only one managing clients and staff in your business, the reality is you’re not going to have time to work on your business. So how do you make time?
By neglecting your clients, closing Outlook or Gmail and ignoring the calls for at least one hour a day while you work on your business. You know what this feels like in the short term? Like being irresponsible.
If you don’t feel irresponsible in the new financial year, there’s a good chance you aren’t putting your own business first. There’s a good chance you’re stuck in Quad 1, stuck in an endless cycle of serving your clients when you could be building up your own business.
In 2025 give yourself permission to be irresponsible.