I recall 1 year ago, when I first started working on my own web design firm, my first thought was: “Oh, my God, I am gonna be my own boss”.

I worked some years ago for someone else in the position I have now (web designer) and it served me as a great experience too. After I left there, all the information I gained served me so well when starting my own small firm.

One of the most important things I learnt was that YOU WON’T MAKE IT WITHOUT A LOT OF WORK. My boss was the same age as I was, a young and classy woman. She wasn’t that desperate to make the business work since she had quite a relaxed financial situation. She never too her job seriously, thinking that being the boss means only telling others what to do.

When I started my own design firm I was afraid. I know she still hasn’t got a good business plan, she doesn’t earn as much as needed to be in a profit and she could file on bankruptcy at any time with that firm since it’s a “dead baby from birth”.

What made her fail? What makes a business fail in the end?

1. You cannot run a business just on weekends

Or when you feel like working. There were days she wouldn’t show up at work, days she would rest or have fun. I could totally relate to this: it’s better to have fun at 25 than work your mind off. Still, relaxation doesn’t make a business strong. So, you cannot take too many days off or have a relaxed program. It would show.

2. Weekends? What are they? Ah, I get it, 2 more days of work in a week.

One thing I have learnt for sure in this year is that the weekend is also a good time to work. When you have just started and the business is slowly picking up, there are not too many weekends to relax on. In 2007 I had 2 weekends off: both times I was in Germany with my boy friend, so I couldn’t work. All the other 50 ones I spent relaxing for 2-3 hours and working for 10 at least in a day.

3. “Nine to five” is a cute expression, don’t make your schedule on this though.

Yeah, 8 hours of work, weekends off. The typical working schedule. We hate it when we are employees, love it when we have a business and would even cut more hours from it. Sure we can do this, if we don’t want to make that business work in this century.

When you are on your own firm there is no more such a lax schedule. The working day can be 15/20 hours sometimes, if needed, the weekends can amass up to 30 hours of work again. There is no time for happy life, at least for some months.

As a conclusion: the main error in my ex-boss style of work was to not put that extra effort. We cannot keep on this crazy working schedule for too long. No one likes working for 80 hours a week and not having a minute of rest. It’s not a plan for a long time, it’s a plan for kickstarting a business, for securing those first clients and being ready for the first employees.

A good business cannot be run in a 2 hours / week schedule either. At least for the first months a new business man cannot afford too many weekends or vacations. It’s a risk you are willing to take. Your business won’t grow unless you work in an “unhuman” manner for a while. That nice 9-5 job is a past thing now: work a lot on the first months/years and then you can harvest the awesome results.

Need I say that in 1 year’s activity my small firm had few times more earnings that the firm I used to work on? I have worked for thousands of hours already, but yes, the future sounds pretty nice in my case.