I wrote this article almost 10 years ago shortly after founding SJE Partners, LLC. Recently I have met several people who have founded there own sandboxes, and thought it might be timely to post it again. There are some differences in the text size due to the age of the original document, but the totality of the document is there. I am interested in your comments and reactions. Enjoy.

Maintaining Fun In The Sandbox

By Steve Enright, President, SJE Partners

How many people do you know who started their new business  in a blur of enthusiasm? Maybe you are one of those people. You can almost feel the excitement and emotional satisfaction as they move into the room. Finally free from the corporate machine. Free to do things the right way, as they should be. Deciding and acting in concert with a belief system rather than just looking at the bottom line. Doing the right things, the right way, for the right reasons.

And how many of those same people, a few months or a few years later, have not only lost that initial enthusiasm, but are actually less happy than when they were in the dreaded corporate world? There are many more of these experiences than we would expect. And why so many? They are doing what they always wanted to do.Or are they?

The answer may be simpler than we think, and at the same time, paradoxically,complex. Success, at least success as we tend to measure it initially, is often the greatest challenge to the small but growing business. We do not always anticipate, or plan for, the right measures of success. Success, measured as growth in revenue, payroll, organization and customers, can quickly take the entrepreneur’s attention away from desired and anticipated results, and what often is what we do best. The complexity is in the anticipation and forecasting of what will happen as we grow. It is also in understanding what that means regarding what needs to be done, as well as planning and executing a plan to address those issues. And there is additional complexity in doing all this in away that keeps us moving up the ‘fun’ curve just as we move up the ‘growth’ curve

At first, during that initial period of enthusiasm, it is usually the entrepreneur and perhaps a small core group of believers who take on the challenge of this new venture. They are there because they want to be. They want to do what they are doing. The more business they get the more they do what they like to do. The excitement grows with the business. Even as the early additions to staff are made, the fun continues.

It is at this point, while it is still fun, that the entrepreneur needs to stop, assess what is about to happen as a result of this success, and put together a comprehensive plan for action.  As the number of customers, the volume of sales, size of the budget and the number of employees grow, more of the complexity and administrivia of the larger organizations creep in. Slowly but surely they eat away at the time and energy available to do what we like to do. We begin doing less what we most enjoy and more what we least enjoy and understand. The longer we put off this analysis and action planning, the greater the risk to success and satisfaction.

The earlier in the growth of the business this analysis is begun, the better the chances are for success and continued personal satisfaction. Choose a person external to the business to help facilitate the process and teach you how to work through planning and implementation. This exercise should be a learning experience for the entrepreneur and his or her staff, as well as a business effectiveness initiative. Avoid those who will come in and ’do it for you’. There is no sustainable learning there! Canned solutions don’t work. You want to be taught how to fish, not be spoon fed!

Most people would refer to this external individual as a consultant. This conjures up visions of hordes of little MBA’s, fresh out of school, running amok in your business, generating fees that could sink a good size ship. If not consultants, how should we name this valuable ally? We believe partner is more closely aligned with our purpose. Partner implies a vested interest in a positiveoutcome for the entrepreneur as client. When selecting this individual look for someone who will partner with you, who believes in a legacy of learning, and who believes the interaction with the business must be fun as well as effective. This person needs to be proactive, ask the right questions, and foster effective dialogue among team members. Having said all this, we will use partner going forward.

With our partner we must decide;

*How best to use the limited time available to us.

*How much of that time will be spent on what we likedo?

*How much of what we do not know do we want tolearn?

*How much of what we do not like do we need to do?

*How does the rest of it get done, and by whom?

These are very important questions. They are not always simple to answer and often difficult to implement for positive results.

Issues like costs, trust and available talent are often critical to the new business plan. So are the issues of family time and personal time. These are very important questions. They are not always simple to answer. Very often we get into business to get better balance in our lives, only to find ourselves no better off, or with even less balance and freedom.

The decision to use a partner in this process also brings greater objectivity to the evaluation. As an added benefit, the partner, as an outsider with a vested interest in the entrepreneur’s success, can and must ask the tough questions that may otherwise be avoided. An example where avoidance might occur is when a family member is in a key role in the business. The ability of this individual to work successfully as the business grows, as well as the potential impact on valued relationships, must be considered objectively, and a workable action plan must be put in place.

Once the analysis and planning are done, the partner then acts as a barometer, checking in at mutually agreed check points to monitor progress of the plan and track the fun and growth curves to see if they are tracking well. Doing this also acts as an insurance policy of sorts for the process to continue to evolve and improve. The proven continuous process of analysis, planning, measuring,and adjusting are facilitated by this periodic review, but responsibility for the process is never taken away from the entrepreneur and his or her team.

The sandbox is a good analogy to a small business.Initially, the effort and excitement is tremendous, a real rush! As more playmates and more toys are introduced, the more complex the organizational and relationship issues become. There is less learning and more throwing sand. If not planned for properly problems can and often quickly arise. But as we all know through our own experiences, with proper planning and execution we can actually increase the level of enjoyment. As entrepreneurs, isn’t that what we want out of our ventures?

In summary, maintaining the fun in you growing small business requires you to step back early and often with your consultant/partner and look out into the months and years ahead. As you do this, determine as thoroughly as possible what lies ahead for your business. Then evaluate, test, and put together a viable but challenging plan for success, emphasizing your fun as well as your growth, and plan and implement careful monitoring to measure results. That way you will go beyond simple maintenance, because your fun will grow with your business.