The secret business media won’t tell you

Saturday is Independence Day here in the States, so here’s the next installment in my ongoing series for every PR pro who dreams of going out on their own or is already trying to make that work.

You don’t have to build a business you hate.

The easiest way to do it wrong is to believe the founder myth the business media keeps rewarding:

“To start and run your own business, you have to sacrifice everything else and work constantly.”

I heard this yet again from one of my favorite founders, Todd Graves of Raising Cane’s (yes, somehow my second newsletter referencing the chicken finger joint).

I admire and respect him, but could not disagree more with his answer to this question on an entrepreneurial podcast: “How do you have quality of life and work-life balance when you're starting a business?”

You don't. Flat out, you don't. You're going to live the business every day… Now, once you get your business open, and you get it established, and it's working, then if you want to grow, then you're not going to have quality of life then.

Graves may be exactly right about building a national restaurant chain. But he’s dead wrong if that advice is supposed to apply blindly to the kind of businesses many of us can build.

The quieter truth is that most entrepreneurs who actually do have balance don’t talk about it in interviews. Because their investors or employees or clients don’t want to hear that. They want to believe the myth that businesses can’t succeed unless the CEO sacrifices everything.

Years ago I media-trained a tech CEO for his company’s IPO. After we finished and he took off the mic, I asked him if it was all worth it. He looked around and said, “Uh, I don’t work weekends. I don’t even work Wednesdays. The board knows, the executive team knows. Those were my and my wife’s terms for doing this.”

To this day I don’t think his schedule ever leaked.

I just had this convo with a friend who has a new business humming. She’s tempted to stretch for the next level but torn because she assumes that requires sacrificing her flexibility to be with her kids and do other things she loves.

I reassured her it doesn’t have to be either/or. Everything is a choice.

It’s harder to build a business that allows balance because our culture doesn’t support it and work expands to fill the time you allocate for it. If you blindly accept that running your business must be 24/7 (Graves says he often sleeps three hours a night), it probably will be.

But if you exercise the rigorous discipline to shut your laptop at 5 pm every night or never work Sundays or always attend your daughter’s dance recitals or honor whatever constraint matters to you . . . then you’ll force yourself to build systems that protect it.

“But clients demand . . .” Clients demand what you let them. Early in building my business, I told prospects up front I wasn’t available by phone and could only promise email replies by the next business day. Some kept looking.

You know what was amazing? The ones who agreed tended to be large companies with big budgets and real pros on the comms team who understood boundaries because they had their own.

And who says you even need direct relationships with clients? You could start or pivot to a different kind of business where customers don’t even know your name or how to reach you.

There are more examples and tips in previous newsletters I’ve written, but the important thing is the principle.

Decide your terms. Make this weekend your own personal Independence Day.