Wow, I have been out of town and super busy for the last 2 weeks.  With the Holidays upon us and Thanksgiving just past, I chose to break from the blog for a time and spend it with the ol’ family…(inlaws actually…).  The break was most excellent with some relaxing beach time in southern California (as opposed to the usual Utah cold).  I did do some work here and there but mostly attended family get-t0gethers and other activities.  It cut November effectively in half regarding work!  December will likely pose a similar challenge as we near the end.  This brings up the interesting, and common, annual business cycle seen by many industries.

November/December tend to be quite slow for many aside from retail and a few others.  Not only are we, as consumers, less preoccupied with personal management matters and “boring” stuff, we are also less interested in offering our services!  Its the professional “double-dip” that leaves us with post-holiday cash-flow pains, especially as start-ups.  So what is the secret? How can a start-up or small entrepreneurial venture stay productive and possibly grow during the holidays?  Now, if you are retail or other holiday-friendly businesses, you don’t count. Whatever the strategies employed, I definitely prefer a level of respect for the season.  That is, be respectful of the consumers focus whether it be family, festivity, religion, or otherwise, don’t be the sore thumb phone call during Christmas Eve dinner!

Simply get creative, cater to the slightly modified wants and needs of the individual, and enjoy the season!  What tips or ideas do you have?

Many entrepreneurs come face-to-face with burnout at some point in their career.  When a company is in its infancy, it is common to put in long hours with little immediate result, in hopes of the big “payday” in the future.  The danger comes when burnout hits long before that grand day.

Achieving entrepreneurial balance is one of the most difficult efforts and one of the most important.  Balancing work, play, family, spirituality, etc. will provide additional energy and clarity that work alone will not deliver.  One must be careful not to simply neglect work or stagnate in work in attempts to maintain other areas, but strain, stretch, and push work efforts while ensuring adequate “wind-down” time with family, friends, and hobbies.  I personally have found this to be a necessity.  Spending time with my wife, painting, photography, mountain biking, and rock climbing are my chosen outlets.  This does not mean that work stress does not mount up, however.

I write this for myself as much as anyone else, even more so.  I am in a continual battle to find balance in order to achieve the desired success, not success at the cost of life. A recent post at bootstrapbusiness.org comments on this issue.  I recommend the book to any interested in bootstrapping. It states:

[advice from a mentor]:

“Rich, I want you to remember this: you can replace anything in life. You can replace a job, a car, money, anything, but you can’t replace your health, your trust relationships, or your family.”

It finishes with:

You do not need to sacrifice family, health, or trust relationships in exchange for entrepreneurial success. I contend that you will be more effective, happy, and successful if you do not.

Any ideas on ways to stay balanced?

I find the use of a mind map as a great tool to add to the entrepreneurial tool-belt.  It allows you to “brain-dump” in a relatively organized manner while giving you a graphical representation of idea relationships, an additional dimension to your ideas.  It is not the “ultimate” tool (one probably doesn’t exist) but one I find very useful.  It plays a stage in the planning and strategy portion of my mind and allows me to organize the “chaos” that rolls around in my head (at least a good attempt at it). I then can translate and communicate the thoughts however necessary.

I currently use a free open-source program called MindMap (see here).  It is simple, easy to navigate, easy to understand, and offers the ability to use it how you want to.  Of course, it’s also free! Which is nice, especially for the bootstrapper.  I currently use the 0.90 rc3 beta and have had no problems or glitches so far.  I then am able to translate the mind maps to business plans, strategy papers, blog posts, or simply send them anywhere as a PDF or whatever I want.

If you have any solutions that you like more, let me know!

A recent video on TED illuminates a point that a colleague and I have shared on multiple occasions, including a podcast called “My Business World”.  The new model of business productivity, often referred to as ROWE (results oriented work environment).  The concept is, essentially, to  allow employees to do whatever they want, as long as the work gets done.  Studies and experience are showing an increase in productivity and personal morale.  The intrinsic value of getting something done with the opportunity to control one’s schedule and action plans is a bigger motivator than increases in pay, bonuses or other direct reward/punishment models of the past.  It has been explored and compared to Tim Ferriss’ work with 4 hour work week here.  The big motivator appears to be the fact that people can define their “ideal” lifestyle today and not in waiting for the elusive day of retirement, all while working and being productive, contributing to the economy.

Dan (in the video) also speaks of variations of this that I find quite interesting and extremely valuable form an innovation standpoint.  Innovation is typically a matter of “captured chaotic response”, that is, in the course of living/working, we tend to stumble upon ideas, answers, problems, solutions, etc.  The process of capturing this chaos and ordering it for reproduction is innovation. Many companies, particularly in the tech industry, have implemented innovation strategies that offer a percentage of time or a day or week to work on anything you want.  Google is likely the most well known with their 80/20 rule, 20% of time is spent on any ideas outside of normal work.  This 20% has produced 50% or more of Google’s innovations as Dan tells it.  The natural chaos of individual human endeavor and thought creates substantially more innovation than the ordered workings of any company and that is seen in 80/20-like planning.

These are powerful aspects of the new motivating business model.  It is important to understand the trade-off in emphasis.  Instead of heavy focus and discipline regarding time, meetings, and such, a substantial focus and discipline must be placed on the results, and improvement of them (hence results-only work environment).  This is basically the only indicator of proper performance and further reward/punishment may exist around this metric alone.  Obviously if you are not getting the results required, you likely won’t stick around.

As a business or in defining your business, take a look at information regarding these new models and see if you can implement them for enhanced productivity and improved morale.  It may even be a cost saver as monetary reward is less necessary.  Any additional resources on these concepts? successes or failures?