Is Entrepreneurship A Good Career Choice? Only For The Laser-Focused

Entrepreneurship has long had considerable allure as a ‘career choice’. People tend to think it ticks many of the boxes that being an employee fails to deliver on, not least a high degree of flexibility, autonomy and control over one’s work-life balance.

That might explain why almost a fifth (19%) of working age U.S. adults are either in the throes of starting a business, or have started running one in the past three and half years – the highest number since 1999 when Babson College started recording entrepreneurship figures annually.

But attention tends to focus almost exclusively on startups that have won the battle for venture capital, glossing over the 90% of the iceberg under the surface.

The reality of daily life as an entrepreneur can be rather different. ‘Flexibility’ can actually mean burning the midnight oil, compromising relationships with family and friends in the process. And ‘autonomy’ can fast become burdensome when there’s no one to tell you it’s time to step out, get a fresh perspective and take a desperately overdue vacation.

Most entrepreneurs, particularly in the early years, will spend a lot of their time worrying about money. Their jobs will entail problem solving if they’re lucky, firefighting if they’re not. They will find it impossible to switch off mentally.

And many will find procrastination becomes the default setting when they’re faced with a multitude of problems that they don’t know how to solve.

A 2023 survey of 251 U.S. entrepreneurs with growing businesses commissioned by my company, Time etc, found procrastination to be almost endemic. On average, more than a third (36%) of an entrepreneur’s work week is dedicated to administrative tasks like logging expenses, creating and chasing invoices, data entry, or ordering office supplies and staff gifts. And more than three in 10 (31%) entrepreneurs will spend between a quarter and half of their work weeks defaulting to these simple, easy tasks.

It’s understandable, really. When faced with problems we don’t know how to solve, it makes sense that we might be drawn instead to tasks we can do on autopilot. Idling away time in this way means we can kick the can–that difficult, mammoth task–further down the road, or at least help our wired brains to switch off. But the knock on effect, and the big draw back, is that we keep our businesses small.

But, if more than a third of an entrepreneur’s entire work week was suddenly redirected away from admin and towards their businesses, success–not to mention job satisfaction–becomes a whole lot more likely.

Don’t get sidetracked

Dominic Monkhouse, founder of Monkhouse & Company, who coaches and mentors CEOs of scale-up tech businesses, says he is baffled by leaders pushing for rapid growth yet who insist on doing their own admin tasks. He believes it’s no coincidence that the same CEOs are usually also the ones who are dissatisfied with, or dislike, their jobs.

Monkhouse recommends CEOs keep in mind their skills, concentrate on areas where they excel and delegate the rest to see significant progress. He adds: “Ideally, 60% to 80% of a CEO’s time at work should be spent working on things that they are uniquely gifted at doing, which will also bring joy and job satisfaction.”

Learn to beat distractions

If you’re taking the leap into entrepreneurship, try the following methods to improve your productivity and fight procrastination before it starts consuming 36% of your week, too.

1. KNOW YOUR VALUE

Each entrepreneur brings a unique set of skills and experience to their business. What are yours? If you’re not a marketer or an accountant, watching an online course is never going to have the same impact as hiring an expert with 20 years’ experience in the field. Likewise, if you’ve never built a website, don’t try now. Outsource and focus your time on leadership and whatever else you’re great at, be it sales, operations or something else. A useful exercise is to write your own job description, just as you would for anyone you hire, and stick to it.

Monkhouse points out that most CEOs tend to make a poor job of tasks they don’t know how to do, and waste more time. He says: “Not only will they not do these tasks as well as somebody else could, but they might take an hour when somebody else could do it faster and with more attention to detail. That one-hour task done badly might also have involved three more hours working out how to do it.”

2. GET SYSTEMS IN PLACE EARLY

Be aware that admin tasks can accumulate: remember these are consuming on average 1.8 days of a five-day week. Anything repetitive or administrative should be automated or delegated to someone else. Your time is among the most valuable in the business. Direct your energy into the tasks that matter to make a difference to the success of your company. Get tools like payroll and HR software in place early on, too – they’ll scale with you.

3. RECOGNIZE PROCRASTINATION

If you own the business and you find yourself ordering a birthday present for your social media assistant, or cleaning the office kitchen, you’re procrastinating. Ask yourself: what am I avoiding right now? You typically have a few options here. Try breaking the job down into smaller, more manageable subtasks that you can do yourself or delegate. Again, if you lack the expertise, put your energy into finding an expert who already has it.

4. TREAT TIME AS PRECIOUS

The ‘workaholic entrepreneur’ isn’t just a trope. I know, because there was a time when I worked 100-hour weeks. I was naively proud of the hours I clocked, until I ended up burned out in the truest sense: physically and mentally broken, and unable to work at all, let alone grow a business. Entrepreneurs today do seem to be wiser to the symptoms of overwork and are more likely to make time for rest and exercise, even when up against it. But that same good sense isn’t always extended to work schedules. Be realistic about what you can achieve in a day. Don’t attempt more than one big job and two smaller jobs. And, when you’re tackling these tasks, remove all distractions so you’re free to focus your energy.