3w ago

Dad, I recently started my own company and it’s stressful. How do I deal with the stress?

It’s a construction company. Started a year ago, finally starting to get into the black. But I’m working 7 days a week now and constantly am thinking about it or on the phone or at work and my wife is starting to get irritated with me for it.

31 comments

Fellow founder here. It's tought and tbh, I often don't do what I preach. First and foremost: There will be good times, there will be bad times. The feeling of getting "in the black" for the first time is nice. Getting back into the red for the first time is far far worse. But: You will get through it. Maybe not your company,but you will. One of my clients is a self-made multi (as in more than 100) millions. How she did it? She failed three times before her current company went widely successful. She only could do so, because she did not give her last, didn't kill off her sanity by working 80h for months when things got tough.
But to become more practical: Create a protocol. Follow protocol.
Sounds strange? It isn't. You will by now know these situations when you are in a hurry and need to do things for the first time and we often think of them as "ah,I can fix it later, we are small, I will remember to do it this way,etc..." Then you have these crunch times when everything is coming at you at once. Trying to remember then how you did something 6 month ago takes time. Far more time than writing it up once. It helps your staff as well - because you will be handling things the same for everyone. Nothing is worse for company culture than staff that doesn't know how to do things if person X (you?) is not there because things get done differently every damn time. And, as additional benefits: You can then delegate things much easier and without as much hazzle. (Or let someone pick things up after you if you get hit by a bus or break both legs)
- How do I go about creating a protocol? Because that sounds like a fantastic idea
  
  Coming from a different field, and not as a business owner, but it sounds like they're suggesting that you document all of your processes and maintain some kind of knowledge base that you then make readily accessible to your employees and you.
  I've found that the below is a good starting point for doing that:
  List out all of the tasks you do, don't worry about covering absolutely everything at this point, just what you can think of.
  Sort those tasks by how frequently you do them (ie daily, weekly, annually, as needed, etc)
  Additionally sort by priority (Paying employees is probably a high priority task)
  Pick a task and start writing up a procedure for how to complete that task. You'll probably want a list of required info, tools, and other prerequisites at the top of the procedure followed by detailed step by step instructions for completing the task. It might be a good idea to create a template for this.
  Once you've written up procedures for all of the tasks on your list, print it off and put it in a binder or several. Make those binders available to everyone who might need to know that info.
  As you think of other tasks, develop new processes, or think of better ways to carry out existing tasks update the document to reflect those changes. It is not and should not be a static document. It should reflect how you actually do things.
  Ensure that everyone is aware of when it changes.
  
  This is a really good idea. This is kind of how I set up my new pricing and bidding ruberic. I think I should sit down with my pricing ruberic and go through and create procedures for each thing on it as a good place to start. Maybe something like
  Necessary tool load out
  Step by step processes
  Job completion checklist
  
  Having a completion checklist is definitely a good idea. Especially if you're working long, high stress days. It can provide some additional peace of mind that you didn't overlook anything or miss a step somewhere.
  If you include start and stop times for each step and the task as a whole it could also provide a source of data for estimating how long similar jobs in the future might take.
  
  Yeah general times would help with bidding too. Great suggestion.
  
  I actually love this and am going to start on this tonight. God thank you so much for this advice
  
  Most has already been written - just a few add-ons:
  Draw.io is a fantastic tool for that. Simply insert the "mental flow" you do things.
  Wiki.js (and others) support it natively,so you can create an article, use the draw.io Plugin, add some text comments and you're done.
  The main task is to think about your ideal process before/while doing this. E.g. "When I hire someone, this is the minimum information I need of him. But what other information do I also want?"
- This is such great advice that I’m going to start on that tonight. I love the protocol idea and I wish I had thought of it myself. Thanks dad!!!
  
  Just another thing: When you do it, make your own "process" about it,too. Put it onto some kind of "cloud system" (SharePoint if you use MS and all the thousands of similar products - there are free alternatives,wiki.js is solid for example) And voila, you have your own QM system and a foundation for ISO9001.

31 comments