Ironman Update

The other day someone asked how the Ironman Challenge was going. Well, you tell me: putting together test servers on a Sunday evening.

So what’s the Ironman deal? Working for 90 days straight – no weekends, no days off, no excuses.

Why? That’s actually far simpler.

I have a really good team managing and running OWN that I do not have to be a part of day-to-day operations at this point. I’ve been telling them all for two months: Just don’t tell me about it!

This way, my entire focus is on bringing together our 3-5 year plan and rolling out the features and services that will keep us growing for the next few years.

That starts with trust that my team can kick ass without me and knows exactly what to do without any of my involvement. It ends with the ignorance of the catastrophic problems that will cause in the long term. I’ve said many times that execution is the least important part of business because if you planned things right and got everything together correctly, anyone can “do the work” – when you look at some of the most profitable companies, their “execution” is done by people very low on the pay grade.

Sounds good, why work so hard?

Discipline.

For the first time in 13 years, I have nobody to answer to and it doesn’t matter too much if I kick ass or just slide or even show up at all. So the natural tendency would be to slack off, get a bunch of stuff started and finish maybe one thing – poorly.

I’m hoping that the hack of really investing a full quarter, honestly, will give me more incentive to upgrade my businesses. Nobody wants to look on months of work without break and feel like it’s been a waste.

Where did you find the time?

I get this all the time. I cut other professional development out.

Road trips – axed. Conferences – cut. Non-company webcasts – bye.

Now that I’m not a critical part of day-to-day operations, I have far less involvement in literally everything. Less meetings. Less reviews. Less “quick questions” that end up killing an hour. No IMs or other stuff.

All I do is review, approve and comment. I have one lunch meeting a day with different people and move on.

I have also cut a lot of professional and personal development. No more business books. No more blogs. No more magazines. The hour or two a day that went to that had to be moved around. And since we have a 2 month old and I’m pretty much on house arrest socially as a result of it – why not do the most with it?

Permanent change or temporary?

Temporary. Very, very temporary.

What last year taught me is that we’re capable of a whole lot more. Now I’m building it.

I’ll go back to being more involved in stuff when I transition it. But here is how I came to this decision.

What do I like the most about my job? Building stuff. The most logical thing would be to hire someone to build stuff while I stay where I’m at. But what if I could both go back to building stuff while my staff matures even more and proves they can run this thing without me, at all?

There you go – Ironman.

I have built a very successful channel company and now I am trying to build beyond that.

But if I don’t challenge myself, who is going to call me out on slacking other than the virtual deadline I’ve built for myself mentally.

Remember all those GTD posts I made around new years? It’s really a process. Find distractions, time wasters, excuses and time sinks and kill them. You’d be surprised how much happier you are with your life when you spend most of it doing what you love or at least master the way of eliminating negative things from your work and home life.