EPT
I guess because of my age, I'm unable to go full out until I burn out anymore, there is this safety gauge now that just forces me to take a day off and I guess that is just wisdom.
I was for about 3 weeks straight, sleeping 2-4 hours every day, and 1 day a week, putting in a full 8 hours. I lost 10kg in that period from not eating much- wasn't intending to diet at the same time, but for me, when I'm not eating, I have an easier time zoning out and working. But about 2 weeks ago, I starting traveling again between Macau and Korea, 3 trips in 2 weeks for reporting and meeting with the investors and whenever I'm in Macau its this 24 hour time schedule of hell. It just that casino environment where meetings can happen at 11pm at night, dinner at 9:30pm, decisions to go to China on a dime or a big meeting set up in Hong Kong (which is an hour by ferry from Macau), with a 9 am breakfast/coffee meeting.
Additionally frustrating is that I work from a hotel room with no scanner, printer, relatively slow internet connection and my Korean iphone doesn't always work in Hong Kong/China/Macau area, sometimes I can access my emails other times not. But, after nearly 3 years of having kids, I've become a family guy and I ask my wife to send me photos of the boys on a daily basis when I'm away. I just don't want to feel comfortable again being away from my family, thinking that it is a normal way to live, been there done that, don't wanna go back to it.
Well good news, the company is established and is accepted by the industry. The bad news, or the really good news is, now its time to grind and simply work hard, the entire strategic aspect of the project is now completed. What people don't realize is that for the most part, in business, strategy only is required in 3 critical parts of a business, (i) formation, (ii) problem stemming from competition, and (iii) managing growth. Everything else is making sure you are executing properly, which means operations. For instance, for a MacDonalds, the main strategic decision is picking the location. Once that is done the rest is all operations unless a Wendy's/Burger King opens next door and takes 30% of your business away.
So it has taken me about 1 week to realize that I have to stop thinking now and just execute, execute and fucking work like a mindless motherfucker and get all the i's dotted and t's crossed. It is a good feeling and now that I've realized that, I've staffed up a bit more, and now since I have clarity in where the company is at, I am just re-gearing up to dig in. That means that I'm in this momentary bubble of time where likely by the end of this day, I'll disappear again for a few months after going non stop. But what is great about grinding is that it is relatively mindless, I just simply need to work hard, the only stress related to that is feeling that the mountain of work is never ending, but the flip side is that....the work you put in directly relates to an increase of revenue.
When you're at a strategic period, whatever you are setting up or preparing for, all that effort, really won't show any results until months or even years later. The longer you spend preparing, the longer you start from actually getting revenues. But once you've moved past that point, now every hour you put in, translates to the bottom line *Providing* that your strategy really was correct to position yourself in that way. Meaning, if you thought that nice packaging of burgers was the key to selling burgers, opposed to higher quality meat, then if it really is about packaging, after you've finished all the design work, acquiring suppliers, then once you launch your cool packaging then sales should immediately change. But if not, then no matter how well you execute your packaging, then its useless. Well in my case, strategy is my specialty and revenues are great, so I was actually least concerned about the strategic aspect.
I don't like doing operations, I'm good at it, but I'm not a natural, its draining. Tell me build structure from 10,000 sticks and I'll be happy with the challenge, tell me to take those 10,000 sticks and line them up by height side by side, I can still do it, but I'll be close to bonkers when I finish (use to just go bonkers right off the bat). The only reason why like like doing operations is that I love to see my strategy fulfilled, nothing gives me more joy on the face of the planet aside from my family. So, this is it, I am now at that point of the long march, the endless dark night, the start of base camp one, but its a good feeling to know that after nearly 11 months from when I started, I'm finally at this point. And I'm lucky as hell, lucky it didn't fail, even coming to this point after 11 months is a miraculous situation for any new business. So I'm going to just take the day, post here wherever I feel like, drink my coffee, play with my boys, eat a big steak, then tonight, I'm going to lock the door, drink 3 cups of coffee, do 30 push-ups and just get everything done that needs to be done and not stop until it is done. Of course that means staffing up, training etc, and really making the company self sustaining.
If I say, I will do it, it will be done. Nothing more to say.
Chill guy, too! He just graduated this year.
