Weekends and running your own business

For a lot of people that run their own businesses weekends are those times when you try and catch up with all the odd tasks that were left from the rest of the week.

A weekend can also be used to work on some client items that can only be done during off hours and that is so true in the IT industry. There are a lot of different items that are part of IT that cannot be done during the normal business day so a lot of those things are planned for the weekend. So many companies don’t want their servers or email being taken off line during the normal business day.

For a lot of IT business owners there are times that the weekend will actually be a day or two during the week to make up for the weekend work that is needed to be performed. There are also times when taking a day during the week to do some of the weekend items means that there are other items that can be done quicker on the weekend due to fewer distractions from vendor emails that seem to come in steadily during the week.

There are a lot of business owners that actually do shift their weekends so that they can be available to their clients on the weekends without impacting their own time. For us there are times when our weekend will be split between one day of the weekend and one day during the week. It really depends on what we are working on and what the demands of our time are. The chance to sit and get some of the writing done without the vendor emails hitting me does help and it also means that it normally takes less time to get the same amount of work done.

Having the flexibility to shift some of your weekend tasks also means that when you are doing some of your own running around there are fewer people out doing the same things. There are times when we will take a Wednesday to do our running around and then work on the weekend and it is so different doing the errands in the middle of the week especially if you can avoid rush hour traffic.

Business owners have to be able to be flexible in their own plans because a weekend is no longer a set two days of the week. A weekend can be two days whenever there is time for it and you have to understand that and enjoy the time that you can find and grab. So, next time your email is going to be down on a weekend or your hear about server work or an upgrade that is being done just think that the person that is doing it isn’t off during the weekend like you are.

Being a business owner

Being a co-owner of a business can be an interesting job. There are days when you know what you are going to be doing and then days that your plans change. The other issue with being a co-owner is you also deal with the different issues that normally other people in a company deal with. When there are issues, sometimes there is no one else that can handle it, so you are required to do that as well as the other things on your plate.

Having the ability to be flexible does really help. There are days that you have to drop everything just to deal with an emergency, and other days that everything seems to run very smoothly. I have had times that there are a couple of emergencies happening at once, so it means that we are both involved trying to deal with both of them.

The other big thing about being a co-owner is there are several various jobs and responsibilities that come with the job. I know that in some cases I am the HR, Marketing, Accounting and Sales department all at once. The other job of being the writer for the company is something that I do most of the time. Yes, all the functions of the company are being performed by two people, so you juggle the tasks when each of you have the time or at least need to get something done. Knowing that I can work at different times of the day does help because it means that if I am dealing with client issues during the day, I can still work in the evening on the business side.

Being a co-owner of a business can be a very challenging but rewarding job. You see the good parts of the job, and you also see so many of the other issues that so many people take for granted.