Business Is Like Being In Jail, When Do We Get Out?

Sometimes It Seems Like I'm The Boss, All Bullshit.

I want to be my own boss.  That is how a lot of people think.  A couple of decades ago I served on a Small Business Administration advisory board in a local community.  It was a temporary project initiated by the local Community College.  They wanted to set up an advisory board of local business owners to help new business owners get started on the right foot.  The idea was to introduce new start-up owners to a group of veteran business owners to have them help guide the new owners through some trying things that occur in a new business start-up.

Seven local business owners were selected to provide this advisory service to the new owners.  We were given some loose guidelines and a routine schedule to meet with the new owners to handle their questions.  The director of the Small Business Administration local chapter would moderate the scheduled routine sessions.  The setting was not private nor friendly in design.  It had the appearance of being much like going to a kangaroo court about troubling issues the new owners were discovering.  The project failed.  It did not attract very many new business owners to serve, even though at that period of time there were a lot of new business start-ups.  I could tell that many of the new business owners were intimidated by the set-up of the scheduled sessions.  I remember one day getting an opportunity to have a private and brief conversation with the Small Business Administration director of that project and asking him if he had ever owned a small business before?  His answer was, "No."  My suspicions were spot on.  It was obvious.

I noticed a couple of interesting patterns in that short experience.  As I met with several of the new business owners, I focused on why they wanted to go into business for themselves.  I wanted to see what the motivating factors were for them to take this kind of risk.  I made a short sheet of questions I prepared and asked them those initial questions.  One of those questions was for them to give five reasons why they wanted to open up their own business.  I listened to their reasons for going into business for themselves. I still remember most of their answers to this day.  The number one reason they offered was how they wanted to be their own boss.  I think all of them used that answer.  Another popular reason given was that they wanted to make more money.  Another popular one was how they wanted to be able to take more time off from work.  And yet another one that was high on the reason list was for them to be able to control what they wanted to do everyday at work.  Those were the top reasons why many of the new business owners were taking this risk.

I have been in the business world for almost forty years.  I associate with hundreds of business owners.  I have five family members who operate their own business models; a mother, a brother, a wife, a daughter and a sister-in-law.  They all own their own models of business, not shared with each other.  Not one of them was able to manage reaching any one of those top reasons for owning their own business, except for having more potential to accumulate wealth.  None of the business owners I know have a lot of 'free-time' to take off whenever they feel like it.  In fact, if you count the lawyers they retain, the accountants they hire, the bankers they use, the suppliers they find and the customers they serve...none of them are their own boss.  None of the successful ones, anyway.  Everyone of those small business owners is tugged and pulled by all of the rules, requirements, suggestions, obligations, arrangements and services they need to respect in order to operate profitably.  They are not their own boss.  They are governed heavily.  In fact, none of the business owners I know are in control until they respect the controls placed upon them for what they do for a living.  They have no control until they submit to the controls placed upon them.  It is no wonder why most of the new 'start-up' business owners in that Small Business Administration program bailed out before their businesses got started.  They quickly discovered that they had to kill most of the reasons why they were motivated to go into business for themselves in the first place.  What a rotten discovery to find.

Business owners are a lot like being placed into a jail to do what they do.  They have some very telling things that need to be done whether they want to do them or not.  If they fail to do those things that are required of them to perform, they will soon find they will need to do them or get out.  If they want to continue to operate their business model, they will need to comply or lose it all.  It is not a forgiving process.  Instead, it is a very demanding process.  Most of what a small business owner does to succeed comes from the fact that they do a lot of things they do not want to do.  If they were an employee, they would have a better chance to ignore doing some of the things they need to do and still remain compensated and employed.  I know, I have been on both sides of that fence.  Employees have more freedom to do what they want to do than a business owner.  Employees get to go home when the day is done and do some of the things that interest them during their private time.  Business owners often need to stay at work longer doing what they need to do when the others have gone home to play.  After a while, business owners give this extra effort of time spent with absolutely no thought at all.  It becomes part of their habit to responsibility.  Most owners do not notice it, but owning a business is much like being in jail.

When Does Owning A Business Looks Like Jail?

If owning a business is much like being in jail, when do we get out?

The pure answer is, "Never."

A good business owner learns how to love the game of business they are playing.  They love it so much that they do not consider it a job that takes up their valuable time.  Instead, they consider it a blessing to be able to do so much of what they love to do.  This is actually one of the key marks to look for in a great business owner set of characteristics.  When the owner loves what they are doing they prefer to do it all of the time and never consider it a jail sentence.  When they start to ask the question, "when do we get out of jail," they are beginning to get burned out of what they are doing.  These are signs of burn-out.

When burn-out begins to arrive everything in business looks like a small jail sentence.  Customers look unfair to please, employees appear less motivated to do the right things, equipment looks like ridiculous expenses, time goes fast or slow depending upon what needs to be done that is critically important to do and favors seem to go only one way...from you to them.  Business looks like prison.  When this occurs, the owner tries to creatively find more time away from the business model they serve.  The manager or owner will begin to quietly disappear from the scene of leadership more often.  The time away from the business model will increase gradually.  The attention to detail will suffer as well.  Performance falls off noticeably.  The business model becomes much like going to jail.  The owner or burned-out manager heads to work to serve his sentence for the day.  The thoughts run all day long, "When do we get out?"

This is burn out.

It is burn out that cannot be seen when it first begins to develop.  Burn out has a sneaky way of hiding itself in the seams of all the work and activities.  As the seams grow larger, the burn out becomes more evident.  Most of the time many seams are developed in many areas of the business disciplines before the notice has been sent out to the owner.  A lot of damage has occurred before the owner figures it out, or cares enough to take an accurate look.  Business becomes a small jail sentence.  It can easily scare the small owner or manager away from performing great work, and it does.  Some of the poor performances discovered to occur in the small business experiences are often caused by the slow eroding death of the internal energy an owner once brought to the business model with enthusiasm.  The slow death of that enthusiasm eventually destroys the heart and soul of the needed life this business once performed.  The ugly numbers begin to take shape and control the form of where the model is headed.  Burn out is winning.  The extra mile has no intention of doing any more time in jail.  It completely disappears.

It is at this time when the owner or manager begins to ask the question, "When do we get out of jail?"

The business model becomes a distraction to the well-being of the owner.  The business model suffers and shows this sign in everything it does.  The model begins to spiral out of control and waits a long time to crash into the ground.  The whole process is like waiting for one more appeal to see if we can get out of jail this time, only to discover that we wake up right back in the drivers seat doing another day of the same crap.

This is burn out.

At this point, nothing seems fun and nothing seems funny.  The days come with too much seriousness.  The creativity is completely lost and the unique strengths that once formed how success was discovered is completely absent.  Burn out is winning and the leader is lost.  The only thing on the leaders mind right now is, "When do we get out of jail?"

Looking forward to going to work makes the owner feel ill.  The model does not drive any excitement anymore.  The owner knows this is happening and does not care to do anything about it right now.  The business looks a lot like chains and shackles inside some prison walls.  There is not much to look forward to as each day unfolds.  No new projects have hit the horizon.  The owner feels trapped like a dog on a spit.  The jail sentence looks like it might be permanent.

This is burn out.

What do we do when burn out begins to win?  How do we defend ourselves in this terrible environment?

How do we find a proper day of rest?  Everything is running rampantly out of control.  Errors are popping up everywhere.  Business volume is dropping like a rock.  Funds are drying up and hope is beginning to disappear.  How do we find a proper day of rest?

If some of these symptoms are beginning to surface, if managing your business affairs is starting to look like a jail sentence, bring yourself to this blog tomorrow and we will begin the work to try some repairs.  We will start to find what needs to be done to revive what once was fun to do.

Let's kill burn out.  It is a nasty jail sentence.  We need to get out of that jail, right now.  See you tomorrow.

Until next time...