As I have made this transition, the question I continuously get from friends, family and prospective entrepreneurs is what is your day like. Before leaving my job I had this understanding that it was going to be busy and stressful but couldn’t really put it into words beyond that because I frankly just didn’t know. My girlfriend thought about it logically if you were working 80 hour weeks with 2 jobs then when you just work careband you will have more time to hang out. The reality is that’s not the case.
Just this morning as I am writing this, I looked at my calendar and I have 3 back to back meetings this morning and one more in the afternoon. What comes with this is the question, how do you ever get work done. And that question is a tough one. When looking at the to do list there are a hundred things to do, things that require my time, attention and focus, not just delegating to others. My strategy so far has been to bring my computer and a notepad with me everywhere I go and use my time between meetings and events wisely. With this I mean, working on the train, the bus, at local coffee shops for spurts of time 15 30 min. I have cut out the occasional social media browse or news article browse when I have a few extra down minutes. The other area of time is at night after the “work day”. I usually spend that time working and doing the things I need to do to move the company forward.
I was in a meeting last week, when I was joking with the other guy (who runs a creative agency). He asked me how my day was going, I explained that I have just been going from meeting to meeting since 7:30am. He replied and said me too. We laughed about that for a minute then he replied “it’s almost like I go to lectures all day and then do all the homework at night.” That clicked with me, that makes so much sense and is the perfect way to describe my day to day.
My day to day is simply as described. It’s a series of lectures and classes all day. Then at the end of the day my time is dedicated to completing the homework and preparing for the next lecture. When you look at my days from this perspective everything else falls in place, the entrepreneurial life is an Ivy League school. If I can do it once then certainly I can do it again!