Today we leave at 18:30

Just now, I'm about to dive into some client work that's been very heavy on my schedule lately.

You see, when you run a productized service, one of the hardest things to accomplish is proper expectation management with your client. This happens for several reasons:

• They might not understand what a request means. Which can damage your production line, because you did not expect a request to come through the way it did.
• Having a retainer price gives clients the feeling that you are always available to respond to messages, unaware of the context switching and price on focus this takes. Communication is key to maintaining business relations, so being communicative while executing at the same time can be unproductive, leading to delayed deliveries and reduction of valuable bandwidth for your business. So as a service provider this is your biggest challenge.

A Productized service is still just a service

Services are for people, and people consume time. So just like when you go to the restaurant and get that service you like so much, like me you might have a digital restaurant of your own. In my case the better metaphor would be a food delivery service.

• You are on call
• Deadline is always ASAP
• Your time is traded for the service

Which leads me to the title of the note.

I got told something that made me doubt everything I'm doing, and more importantly, why I am doing it

You are talking to a 26 year old here. For the past 10 years, since I started working, I've always repeated something to myself when the extra hours or long nights were kicking in...

Now is the time to push the hours. To put the work in.

And so I have... for the past 10 years. It's been incredible. I feel driven, determined, and have truly convinced myself of the power of dignity through work. Relentless rigor.

Until yesterday...

I have a desk rented full time at a coworking. I always see this guy when I come in. He drives a sick car (nothing extravagant, just very nice), comes in at a comfortable hour (9-10 am) and leaves at about 18:30 everyday.

I don't know what he does, but he has profitable-business-owner, secured-investments-and-liquidity vibes. Plus, I sometimes hear him, what I believe is, giving orders. He might be like 40 something.

Somehow, I can sense that he respects me. You see, I'm almost always here when he comes in, and ALWAYS when he leaves.

So yesterday, he's leaving and, very subtly, with what I perceived as a mentoring-like tone, he said:

If you are not leaving by 18:30 you are doing something wrong with your time

Damn... I cannot stress how much that hit me. My biggest weakness has always been time management. That's why I continuously come up with systems to manage my time differently and better. Plus, bad time management and saying yes to every client's ask can be a deadly combination.

Nevertheless, I am so aware of this that I make up for it by stepping up and getting the job done, no matter the time it takes. I like to keep my word, and my clients happy.

This confirmed that I have to learn some things.

Stop making up for your weakness with your strength

Sounds like bad advice. It is not.

If you continuously make up for your weakness (time management) with your strength (discipline and rigor to get to the finish line), you will end up in an endless loop, and your weakness... well, it will stay weak, you will be unbalanced.

Rather, be aware of this weakness, and work on it. Better if it costs you money than if it costs you the prospect of a better, more profitable future. Which leads me to the other lesson.

Build something that serves you

So you built a service that serves other businesses/people. You are making money out of it. Nice.

What about the time when something else, another tech, an industry change, or anything rather, keeps you from being able to provide the service.

Or if you are like me, you just don't appreciate the ceiling that providing services has, you want to go further.

I freelanced. Did not like the business model, so I productized my services. I scaled. My time did not scale. My income did. But I am full time freelancing under the disguise of a productized service. It's nice. But it's not the best, and I know there's more. I know I can build useful things.

So I am building something that serves me. And I am using that strength (discipline and rigor) to get it shipped while keeping the service business going.

And it might fail. There's a HUGE chance it will. But if there's one thing in which it will not fail, is in helping me start making the move from 100% freelancing, to actually owning an asset that makes money and does not require me to be nurturing it full time.

It's the asset that will allow me to, when I want, leave at 18:30. And if I don't (which might be the case) is because I love working my ass off and just getting stuff done.

And yes, I still believe right now IS the time to continue pushing. I actually believe it does not have an end. But I do believe in leisure and changing environments. Any kind of ill-managed obsession will kill you eventually.

So, what am I building?

Now I have to get back to working on delivering more services 🤣 ... for now.

After all, I think providing services is the path to finding out what you want to build.

Thanks again for reading this far if you got here.

Here's my good-conversations-calendar in case you want to talk:

• Business
• Tech
• Software in the era of AI
• Experiential Real Estate
• Geopolitics