You’ve averaged 60-80 hours per week of work for the past five years

You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve averaged 60-80 hours per week of work for the past five years.

When I was a kid I felt like I had been sold into slave labor if I had to do two hours of work in a week. I worked at Little Caesar’s for a few months during high school and putting in four hours straight felt like an eternity. During college I had jobs ranging between 30-40 hours per week, and that also felt like a lot of time. What’s strange about working 60-80 hours per week when it’s your own business is that rather than feeling overworked, you feel as though it’s still not enough time.

I’ve often joked that if any politician will campaign on the platform of creating a 36-hour day I’d vote for them in a heartbeat. If I put in 16 hours at work I feel as though I haven’t been there longer than 3 hours. The difference of course is that it’s an entirely different feeling when you’re working for yourself vs. “the man.” Every hour I work is one step closer towards being profitable, paying off debt, making payroll on time, growing the business, and fame and fortune if that’s your thing.

There are employees with no ownership in companies that work 60-80 hours per week, but if they have no stock options, don’t get paid overtime, and have no ownership in the company then they must either be workaholics, easily manipulated, or dedicated to a degree that I’m not sure is healthy.

I’ve long thought about how I can share the way I feel with my employees. Not so much because I want them working 60-80 hours per week (I’ve decided it’s not necessarily healthy and I’ve cut back to 50-60 hrs on average), but I feel sorry for anyone who works somewhere and feels like their job is just a job, when they could feel the way I do–excited about going to work. Even when I hate my work I still like it. If an entrepreneur can figure out how to get employees to share the same spirit he has then he’s going to have a potent workforce.

However, after a few years of experience I’ve decided that many employees (not all, just many) would prefer to just have a job. I guess that’s ok, but even if that’s the way most people I feel I believe entrepreneurs can be benefitted by trying to figure out how to generate the same enthusiasm they feel with their employees. Sharing this series of blog postings with your employees is probably not a great way to get them excited.