As these remodelers show, shifting focus away from the business for a time to deal with traumatic personal events doesn't have to derail your company.
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After building his vacation home, Tom Mitchell, owner of Mitchell Construction, in Medfield, Mass., wanted to take a month off and still be able to return to a thriving business.
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There's a little bit of the Lone Ranger in every remodeling entrepreneur. Enable your team to solve and prevent problems, so you can ride off into the sunset.
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Michael Carey, owner of Carey Contracting Corp. in Iron Mountain, Mich., says, “We believe we're only here to make a living so we can live life. A solid family life is first.”
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When Michael Wilkinson owned a small remodeling company, he worked, he says, probably 15 hours a day “doing all the work in the field and in the evenings going out on estimates, seeing people, writing up contracts and bids. Eight years of that.”
Most small business owners can't find enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. They know they should assign their tasks to employees, but which ones? To help in those decisions, take a look at the Skill/Value/Time (SVT) matrix.
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As a frequent speaker at industry meetings, I see the consequences of cell phone over-reliance. At every scheduled break, between seminars, I witness a sea of contractors and their employees with cell phones glued to their ears.
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Summer is a good excuse for contemplating the four-day workweek. Crews will work 10 hours instead of 8, but they'll still have some natural light when they get home. And with school kids on break and vacations in swing, “it's a nice morale booster for everyone,” says Donald Keney from Castle...
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Delegating to achieve work/life balance doesn't mean dropping the ball.
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For consistent work/life balance, you must choose to have balance and be committed to having it. Asking for help is a strength all successful leaders must possess.