It ain’t easy..

With just one workday left till my big vacation, I find most of my mental time (which was dedicated to imagining the next crackheaded idea I had) goes towards reflecting just how good I have it and how great Own Web Now became in a relatively short period of time. Naturally, I wanted to offer some advice that I wish I hadn’t figured out the hard way.

Last fall I went to talk to my pal Arnie about Shockey Monkey and the stuff that you’ll start seeing later this summer/fall. He made a very accurate observation that I looked tired (2nd kid, long year on the road, growing company, etc) and offered me the best piece of advice I ever ignored: “You shouldn’t be making decisions when you’re exhausted. Take time off, you’ll figure it out.”

That was his advice, I’d recommend it to anyone that isn’t insane a workaholic like me.

My advice is that only you can dig yourself out of the mess you’ve made. If you’re honest with yourself, most of the mess that you (are likely blaming others for) have was caused in some way / shape / form by you.

The mess typically happens when you start taking other people’s brilliant ideas over what you know is right. For example, it took me nearly 10 years to stop listening to people immediately after they say: “We have this business case scenario…”

We have a unique business case scenario…

“Yeah, me too. Mine calls for not paying taxes. The thought of being beaten up on the prison floor keeps me from pursuing it though.”

In business, people like stuff done cheap. But they want it done their unique, special way.

I like to remind people that I don’t work at Burger King and that unless they want me to make them a sub, writing software isn’t like adding extra mayo or substituting swiss for american cheese.

You will always be pushed to change, tweak and hack your solution because people that don’t understand technology will not understand it’s limitations or why your recommendation makes sense. This is the #1 obstacle to growth of SMB IT Providers – they get caught up in the lunacy of SMB owners that like to tweak everything and end up becoming just another internal employee. No wonder you can’t scale and grow fast, you’re only human.

One story that is near and dear to my heart, and I love telling it over and over, concerns the people that bring me family businesses with higher reliability requirements than Fortune 500. Stop me if you’ve heard these:

“this is the worst possible time for this to go down”

“we absolutely need 99.999% uptime and maintenance windows need to be announced 6 weeks in advance”

“we need a zero downtime migration, will this stupid idea work”

Listen. If Disney can take a multi-hour maintenance period twice a week – on the sites that are used to check in their customers and sell their vacations and tickets – so can your little family business. So long as you understand your limitations, you can work around them. Or you can go back to pen and paper, no downtime there.

This may seem heartless to you but it’s really the best single piece of advice I can offer you: do not go against your principles. When you do (and when people go against your advice) they will come back to you for help and even when you solve their problem they will still blame… you’ve guessed it: you.

Trust me, I’m not a virgin

The problem with people that don’t know any better is that they are unwilling to accept advice from those that have seen the carnage that happens when you go outside of the recommendations. Recommendations, or best practices, are simply a collection of the least lethal steps to be taken to achieve a tech solution.

You don’t recommend solutions because they cause the least amount of work for you, you do it because you’ve seen a bunch of different ways this can be done and the one you’re recommending will cause the least amount of problems. But but but but we have a business case scen… no, you have my recommendation – go against it and you’re on your own.

Enabling Bad Ideas Is The Same As Supporting Them

There is a huge difference between an idea that sounds good and a successful implementation of a good idea. Many people can’t figure out the difference and it leads to a ton of stress and unnecessary work for everyone.

This is where so many people hit the wall of frustration that comes with enabling bad ideas. Because no matter how much you discourage someone from pursuing something stupid they will always blame you for it when it goes wrong. The era of personal accountability is long gone and since someone is paying you for the service, you’re going to deliver that service, right?

No. The service is what’s in the contract and guide. If you don’t follow it, we go back to step one.

Conclusion

Some of the worst business decisions I’ve ever made were not related to being overworked or tired, they were result of compromising my principles in order to earn business that was not worth the money it was bringing in. Which left me tired and overworked, trying to fix the problems I knew were going to happen in the first place.

Trust me, it’s not worth it. Making a dollar isn’t a business if it costs you two dollars to earn it.

Easier said than done: You’re not the first or last person that ended up in this situation. Last fall I had the option of taking it easy, backing away from the challenge and using the many valid excuses I have in my life to take the easy way out. There is no thinking yourself out of the mess you’ve made: there is just a lot of work and elbow grease. In the past 6 months I damn near killed myself and everyone that works for me: and now I’m going on a real vacation in nearly 10 years and leaving the company in the hands of people that I not only trust but have a long record of knowing they can handle anything people throw at them.

If you’re going to work hard, work smart. Stick to what you know and surround yourself with good people and good business partners that have the experience that you do not.