As I try to semi-retire (“try!”) I am doing the opposite of what my friend Paul recommends as a business growth strategy…. let me explain:
If you do projects, like (in his case) making websites for people and, in my case, writing a book or doing a talk at a foreign conference or training up a bunch of trainers, then your workload looks like this:
CHUNKS
You have to keep finding more work at the end of each project, always back to zero when each one ends.
So if you want to build your company up it’s better to have a subscription / regular repeats / maybe even passive income model, like this:
LAYERS
Each sale is only small, but they build up to the point where you are making more than before, and in a steady non-scary way – you never have too start again from scratch.
How can you make YOUR business look more like this second one??
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But for my time, as I try to semi-retire, I want to do the opposite!
Rather than collect more and more continuous things (layers) that take my time – coaching, trustee of charity, weekly classes, helping with a local organisation, starting a podcast, etc, I’m going for the top model of activities (chunks) – to get closure on things, and choose things where I CAN get closure – holidays, write a book, do a foreign conference, help with a one-off project, do a fixed piece of work for a charity, build a shed, etc.
And for the continuous things I’ll either say no to, or delegate – (gardening, invoices, etc there are people who would like to be paid to do those, and they are welcome to them!) Unless I like doing them – for example playing in a band, that’s a continuous thing but I want to do it, so that’s a layer I am happy to add.
Conclusion – for work and money, add the layers. For time, ideally make it chunks, where you get closure and you get your time back to being yours again.
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