A friend recently asked me, “When you have a Business in Blue Jeans, what do you do all day? Do you work?”
At first this made me giggle. Of course I work! Any business, requires work, at least in the initial stages, and most businesses, especially the ones we love, need our presence some of the time. Anybody who tells you otherwise is just lying to you.
When I first start a company, my days are pretty full. I spend most of the day working on developing the concept, building the idea, the brand. And once the concept is established, then there’s a corporate identity to build and a list of products and services to create. There are marketing plans and set up and tax IDs and web sites and financing and e-zines and future planning…so much goes into the initial stages of a business, and skimping on this time is a critical error that a lot of people make.
That said, a lot of the work done in these stages can be (and is) outsourced to trusted professionals. I have a team of people I’ve worked with for years and I trust each of them to know what I need them to do and to do it well.
When the company is launched, the kind of work you do changes. Now you’re spending more time doing what you love, combined with getting your name out there. Here again, creative outsourcing can free up a lot of your time. As your company grows, you’ll spend more and more time doing what you’re truly passionate about, and you’ll have more and more free time as well, if you’ve structured your systems properly.
So what does my life look like? I put in two hours at the gym, five days a week. I work most, but not every, day. Some days I may work for 1 hour, responding to e-mails and emergencies from my outsourced professionals. There are occasional 12-hour days when I have a Relaxed Fit client who’s launching his/her business. But those long workdays are few and far between. My days are typically more like today, when I’ve worked off and on for about four or five hours, while simultaneously baking an herb-olive ciabatta.
For me, a Business in Blue Jeans is all about flexibility. I can take my business anywhere in the world, and I have. I’ve worked from cafes in Paris, Edinburgh, London, and Montevideo. I’ve worked in Chicago, L.A., Orlando, Hilton Head, Houston, Dallas, and San Francisco. I can work from home, the library, the art museum, coffee shops, and wherever else I feel like working that day. Point is, if I’m in a fantastic place like Paris, I can work for an hour and then go enjoy myself. And I’ve set up my systems so I can pretty much leave for a couple of weeks when I want to see the world and everything continues to run perfectly.
During regular times when I’m not traveling, I have a lot of free time. I’ve structured my business that way. I have a team I can call on, so whether I’m baking fresh pitas, playing with my cats, or traveling the world, they’re making sure everything continues to run smoothly. And if I had children and wanted the freedom and flexibility to spend more time with them, it would work the exact same way.
That’s what I do. I design businesses to suit your lifestyle and what you want that lifestyle to look like. I work with you to create a business that fits the needs of your life and your family and that provides you with the time you want- whether it’s to travel the world or stay right at home.
That’s what I do with my Business in Blue Jeans. What could you do with yours?
