Ross Williams

According to a recent Bank of Scotland survey into work-life balance, the average UK entrepreneur puts in 50 hours’ work per week. The Bank of Scotland survey also shows a clear relationship between hours and commercial success.

For those companies growing at over 10% a year the average working week is 52.3 hours.

My online dating business is growing by about about 400% a year at present - how many hours should I be working?!?!

The survey does show a clear relationship between the amount of hours worked and commercial success, coupled with the fact that owner-directors on average have less than 20 days holiday per year.

The fact is that I’m working significantly less hours now than I ever have before, I have less stress and life is much easier - despite the fact that we’re growing at such an incredible rate. We’ll be generating over £1million/month by the end of this calendar year yet I’m quite confident that if I didn’t turn up for 3 months not much would change.

In the early days of running Rawnet, I’d regularly need to work evenings and weekends - it was enormously stressful pushing to get a sale just so we could make payroll for that month. So I can understand why the survey reports the crazy number of hours UK entrepreneurs are working.

The reason I was working so many hours and under so much stress - and I suspect this is the same reason affecting many entrepreneurs - is because I wasn’t focussing on my strengths and I wasn’t doing what I was good at. Until 3 years ago I was still raising invoices myself.

Those were great times looking back at them - I love the feeling of start-up mode, I really do - although with everything considered, I’m happier now knowing we’ll generate six-figure profits each month.

The early stages of growing your first successful business are a bit like the early stages of your first proper relationship - you had a great time, learned a lot, but wouldn’t necessarily want to do it again!! I learnt a huge amount from my time at Rawnet as did the rest of the team. Those lessons were absolutely vital and as a result both businesses are now generating more profit than ever.

Crucially, I’ve learnt that being a successful entrepreneur isn’t about working every hour in the day. Nor is it about not taking holidays (I take more holidays than anyone I know, except maybe my dad!!). For me, to make a success of your business you’ve got to make yourself redundant and be able to remove yourself from the business.

If you can do that then it means the business can run day to day without you - all your systems are in place to measure and manage the business. Which leaves the entrepreneur free to do strategy, become the visionary of the business - and take all the credit!! :o)

I AM A DRAGON - HEAR ME ROAR.

Well, calling me Puff is probably more appropriate, but let me explain how I came to utter these words.

Over the last year, I’ve started to receive approaches from people who want to get start up a web business, usually related to my areas of expertise - social networking and online dating.

Last week I met with a company who had the “next big thing” which would revolutionise online dating. They wanted me to sign an NDA (I refused) and were massively excited about their plans.

I had an hour booked in my diary and after about 30 mins of pitching I asked about their revenue plans - how would they make money from this plan?

It would be inappropriate to give details of their idea, other than to say it really was rather useless, with no scope for cash generation or even to generate IP value.

With the proliferation of business programmes over recent years like The Apprentice and Dragons Den, I can’t understand why people still think it’s 2001 and an idea without revenue is acceptable (hey, anyone checked out http://www.boo.com/ recently!??).

As entrepreneurs become an accepted part of celebrity, maybe people aspire to be the next Alan Sugar or Peter Jones rather than a Hollywood actor or singer - however, it’s a less expensive wasting your time as a tone deaf singer than it is developing a non-starter of a business.

Awesome:

Okay, it’s a bit sick. Maybe. But I gotta admit, I’d pay money to see this.

According to the Daily Fascist, a zoo in south-east China runs these displays. First the horsey gets mounted by the lion, then a tiger jumps on for a ride. Live animals are fed to the tigers in front of spectators. In a display in Changchun, a tiger is put in a cage with an ox while muzzled so it tries to attack its prey but cannot kill it, producing an agonising and long-drawn-out battle.

This is sick, there is no doubt and it’s very wrong indeed.

If they introduce this into the Olympics there’d be so little competition even South Africa might have a chance of winning a Gold :o)

Typical - you put a deposit down for a new car and the new week a faster, prettier version is announced. This one though, is something rather special - with a limit of just 77 cars to be produced:

According to Evo Magazine, Aston Martin has released a snapshot of the stunning new One-77, its most secret and exciting flagship project. The exclusive stunner - with an expected price comparable or higher than Bugatti’s Veyron - will be based on a sophisticated carbonfibre chassis with a lightweight hand-crafted aluminium body.

Power is provided by a 7-litre V12 engine, so performance will be predictably brisk. Production will be limited to a run of 77.

I’ve got a weekend of crap clearing ahead - emptying our old clothes, wardrobes and eBaying a bunch of old stuff which is still high value (my iPod Touch hasn’t got a look-in since I got the iPhone).

Today we were approached by a video company wanting to get into white label video:

http://vzaar.com/

They’re currently providing videos for eBay - quite a nice little model, would be interesting to see if they go into video profiles for social and dating sites.

We’ve been enjoying some really good PR over the last few months. As part of this, I’ve been asked to contribute to a number of different print and online titles.

It was great to be asked to contribute as a featured columnist for Mediatel.co.uk - the UK’s largest single source of media intelligence:

http://www.mediatel.co.uk/?newslink=/newsline/2008/08aug/05/column.cfm

Thanks to the guys and gals at Braben for helping to arrange this (and all your help with the, ahem, “writing”).

As some of you may know, my rather lovely apartment is on the market with Savills in Windsor - alas quite frankly it isn’t likely to sell in the current market so we’re probably going to need to rent it out from October.

I’ve been looking around a lot and apparently where we’re going wrong is our distinct lack of a pet shower:

http://www.webvet.com/main/article?id=1401