I agree with this but also disagree. You're bullet points are all spot on but it also does become your life for a period of time. Wearing your logo everywhere, always having cards on you, always looking for opportunities to market or network. Making sure everything gets done.
What people need to realize when you start a business is it is an all day grind for years. If you don't want to be grinding all day, you need to work smarter and delegate the things that take up the most time and would take time away from your family. But it won't be easy for a long time.
That being said, unless you are starting with a bunch of capital, many of us have to do the stuff ourselves till we make enough to hire other people. That requires time - I'm blessed to have an amazing wife that understands the assignment and doesn't give me grief if I have to work late or do something real quick. That being said, I can't just do that all the time either so you have to have the emotional intelligence to realize when enough is enough.
Absolutely! That's a grounded take and it obviously comes from experience. Building a business does require a ton of grind or it just will not happen. Especially when nothing is going to get done unless you yourself do it. It's good to work. Work is part of life. I think a lot of businesses fail because people think they can just set it up and walk away. It just doesn't often work like that!
We all crave some form of balance, but I think sometimes when people talk about "balance" in life they mean short term, but thinking long term can really change how we think. If I think in terms of years instead of days, I might spend a couple years really grinding, but if my goal is to create something that can still work without me, then I know that those two restrictive years could earn me five years of relative freedom. It's like anything in life, if I want to loose weight and keep it off, I need to build the system that is my body to burn more calories during the day. That means I need to retrain my body to loose excess fat and build lean muscle. That takes grind. I don't eat certain things. I don't drink certain things. I lift certain things. Eventually, my body adapts and the system changes the results.
Business is like that, but the purpose of that article is simply to point out that that even in the "grind" years, we still need to keep the main thing the main thing. Like you said, it's so important even over the short term, to not go so hard that you loose what matters most in the process. It's not worth it. Family matters more than work.
