Are you working too hard?
Aug 19 2008
News that UK entrepreneurs are clocking up 50-hour weeks will come as little surprise to hardworking business owners.
Starting your own business is akin to having children: it consumes your time, energy, and occasionally your will to live. So perhaps the real surprise in this survey from Bank of Scotland is that entrepreneurs still have so much spare time on their hands.
That said, the average entrepreneurial working week is still up three hours from last year, and the signs of strain are showing: 71 per cent of small business owners feel stressed by running and managing their business, compared to 54 per cent last year.
The outspoken venture capitalist Jon Moulton, who has backed dozens of early-stage companies, expects serious commitment from entrepreneurs he invests in. At a recent growth company forum he remarked, ‘If I call an entrepreneur at 5.45 and they’ve already gone home, that’s not the kind of person I want to be investing in.’ (Incidentally, Moulton also refrains from backing business owners who have been divorced three times.)
Tony Price, the interim CEO of chief executive development organisation Vistage, differs from Moulton on working hours. ‘Everyone needs some balance in their life,’ says Price. ‘That doesn’t mean not working hard, but you have to understand you can’t work at 100 miles an hour all the time.’
A lot, of course, depends on your level of ambition. The survey from Bank of Scotland found that entrepreneurs whose companies were seeing annual growth of more than ten per cent worked an average of 5.5 hours more than those growing at less than five per cent. So for them, working harder seems to be paying off.
For all that, common sense dictates that it’s not worth sacrificing your physical or mental health on the altar of business success. After all, you want to be in a fit state to enjoy the fruits of all that hard graft.
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