Have you ever wondered what most entrepreneurs do daily to be successful? Every entrepreneur has different things to do daily that gets him or her closer to the dream business. But one thing is certain: most entrepreneurs spend longer hours on their businesses when they start. And it can get pretty intense even when you run a stable business.
These are practical stories of how some entrepreneurs spend their day.
These stories were first shared on Reddit.
1. medical57 ( I own 5 companies)
1) A medical transportation (Ambulance and Non-Emergency Medical transport company) 2) Car Washes 3) Trucking Company (LTL) 4) Limo Service 5) NYC Taxi’s (green “SHLs” and a few yellows).
My typical day is kind of hectic. I wake up at 5:45am with my 1 year old. Change her diaper, make her breakfast get her dressed and ready for DayCare. I pass her off to my wife, and then I head to my car. Depending on the day, what’s going on at each place, and where the major “Fire” is, I decide where to start. Usually my first stop in the morning is at my Depot. I call it the Depot, it’s a big warehouse that houses the Taxi service, the Limo company, the trucking company and the Ambulance/NEMT company.
They each have separate offices, but share in the Mechanical/Service usage. by 7:30 AM I’ll make my rounds from manager to manager, checking in on major issues, signing documents if needed, and going over their daily reports (this is something I should write another post on I think). Once I’ve completed that, (usually takes about 90 minutes), I’ll head to my office and start making my calls. I have an assistant who is basically my right hand man. He’s smart, tough, and knows me. He has my 2nd coffee, a whole wheat wrap with turkey and eggwhites, list of voicemails, and issues which he knows are coming up.
I spend about an hour making calls, going over email and dealing with anything that I didn’t handle in the morning meetings. At 11:30 every day I have a meeting with my CFO. We’ll go over the different lines of business, go over reports, figure out which vendors to pay, which to sweat, etc… This takes about 45 minutes. Its now 12:30pm, and I usually have a lunch appointment- either a sales lunch with the sales guys, or a vendor meeting, or with one of the managers, etc… Lunch finishes about 1:45 (including travel time), and on Monday Wed and Friday I’ll make my way to the car washes to get their reports.
If it’s raining, they’re likely closed, so the managers come to the Depot. 3:00pm rolls around and if I’m at the farthest car wash, I’ll head straight to the gym (I crossfit. For what its worth, I can’t find a better workout than my local box for the money. (also could be another post)).
If I’m near the Depot, I’ll head back there till 5:30pm, then grab a 6:00pm WOD.
Then I’ll head home, which brings me back to my house at about 7:30pm. I’ll grab a quick kiss and hug from my daughter before she goes to bed, eat dinner, watch a little TV, I love how CNBC has the profit and shark tank on all the time, and then head to sleep about 10pm.
What I neglected to mention is that I’m on the phone ALL DAY. I mean like ALL DAY. I’m constantly checking email, and my assistant (who is with me during the day) is totally wired in. I refuse to work on the weekends. My rationale is that if I’m not going to make a living working 5 days a week, its doubtful I’ll make it in 6.
2. GameWeiver (I run a home business based around retro video games and video game, comic book, and pop culture merchandise)
I’ve been in business since 2011 and have been doing it full time for a good part of the year. When I was working and running the business I was the head chef at a local restaurant that recently burnt down. I am 23 years old and work by myself, with some extra help around Christmas season.
I am a night body, so I typically wake up between 12pm and 2pm. I start my day always by responding to emails, phone calls, and social media accounts (twitter, facebook messages, ect). After that I will list new merchandise on my eCommerce site (this involves testing games, taking photos, listing and pricing the games). I spend roughly 10-15 hours a week listing. My sales are multi platform, so I list on shopify and then export the items to eBay and post extra items on Amazon’s marketplace.
Once I have finished listing it’s typically right around 5pm or, at this point I print packing slips and package all of the orders from the previous day (I offer 1 day handling on all of my products).
Packaging usually takes me 1-2 hours. At this point I take a break, make dinner and relax for about 30 minutes to a hour.
When I am finished eating, I organize all of my paper work for the day (invoices, purchases, sales sheets, ect) and clean my office. I am a absolute neat freak and my office is always well organized and clean.
I usually spend from 9pm-midnight working on blog posts, social media interactions, and other community based things. Retro gamers are really great fans, I myself being one love to talk to other gamers, watch their videos, and take part in the community.
Around midnight I will stop working and play video games with my friends for a couple of hours while continuing to tweet and be active during down time. I usually go to bed around 5am, and do the same routine the next day.
I typically work 6 days a week for about 10 hours each day, mainly because I like to stay busy.
This is a very simplified explanation of what I do on a daily basis, there are other things I work on randomly throughout the week. I also run a youtube channel dedicated to helping new eBay and online sellers. I spend a good amount of time every week helping them and making videos.
Like I said before this is the first time I really started going full time with my business, my sales have steadily increased for 6 straight months and I should defiantly be able to gross around $80,000 for the year. Roughly 40% of this will be profit, and a majority of the profit comes from rare and collectible video games.
If you have any questions feel free to ask or pm me, this post has been very insightful. I am always interested in how others are doing business, and I love to seeing all of the successful endeavors.
3. badandy80 (I started an digital marketing company (www.steelsmithgroup.com) about 3 years ago)
Now, we’re a team of about 8 people working at least part time as well as a handful of contractors. We’re a semi-virtual company so I usually work from my home office communicating by phone or screenshare. I travel about a week out of the month to meet with my team, clients and prospects. A typical day for me is meetings with everyone I just mentioned.
I spend quite a bit of time each month doing an analysis monthly for our clients and putting together our progress and strategy report. We do a monthly strategy call with each client to review the reports and a weekly project meeting so I can get updates on where things are at and make decisions. We’re currently very focused on a few verticals, and are doing a balancing act budget-wise trying to manage our current clients while building our own marketing channels as we can for new opportunities.
It’s honestly not the crazy, intense agency life yet but we’re swinging for the fences and really only accepting GOOD clients so we can grow. In between all of that, I’m spending some of my mornings with my new-found stock market addiction and dreaming of an office in each major city on the west coast. I’m taking things step-by-step at this point and (as impatient as I am) most importantly I’m not killing myself with stress like I did with my last business.
4. cosmonautsix (Run my house flipping business)
Day to day isn’t very typical, I work on acquisitions, managing rehabs, managing the sale of finished properties or raising new capital almost daily, so a large variety of tasks. Plan is to get someone in house to start handling marketing, and sales, have a project manager to crack the whip on crews.
Daily? Wake at 6, have a morning routine that goes until 8. I will most of the time take my son to school at 9. Hit the office, check email, social media, etc. then any number of the following: set up marketing campaigns, get mailers ready, return calls from voicemails we got from potential sellers, return voicemails from agents, go see houses to possibly buy, visit completed products of my competition, have lunch with money lenders, setup or attend networking events, closings, Home Depot, evaluate deals from other investors, coach and mentor, pick up my son from school, email out deals to other investors that we are passing on for profit, make offers, accept offers, deal with title, inspectors, appraisers, lenders, stupid agents, shoot videos for my website, etc etc.
Usually done by 4-5, home with the family, etc. I will usually hop on my laptop from 9-11pm to finish up anything important I didn’t get to that day etc. expanded this quarter into another state with a local partner down there, running his marketing as well. Hope to expand this coming year into new construction, scrape and build properties, redevelopment, infill opportunities. All in all it gives me a ton of flexibility. I’m literally the only dad to drop off my son at pre-k, and we are certainly the only couple who does the same together.
