Most people have the wrong idea of what balance means, especially when it comes to work-life balance. According to Meny Hoffman, CEO of PTEX group and proud husband and father of seven, work-life balance means giving 100% to whatever and whoever needs it at the time, rather than giving splitting your time and energy evenly between the two. Tune in to hear how Meny has managed to give the best and the most to both his family and his business throughout 18 years in business.
In this episode Meny shares also pearls of wisdom on how to deal with competition, hire your first employee and grow your business, plus his struggle of turning down opportunities that he would have given anything for in the early years of his business.
Teaser:
My Guest: Meny Hoffman
Meny Hoffman is the CEO of PTEX Group, an award-winning business solution agency headquartered in Brooklyn. He is a lifelong entrepreneur and is passionate about collaborating with growing businesses to create winning strategies that allow them to lead and flourish. He is also the founder of LTV lets talk business platform that offers business education to entrepreneurs and business people looking to learn, grow and lead. And he is also a proud husband and father of seven.
Pivotal Moments:
Always had an urge to create stuff. Was the kid who put out lemonade stands and searched his house for stuff to resell.
Designed his first business card at the age of 13, which he still has today.
After finishing school and starting to work, decided that he never wanted to be trading hours for dollars and that everything he built would be something that could bear larger fruits further down the road.
Opened PTEX Group 18 years ago, a business and marketing service agency that provides organic marketing, web development, printing & design services, and also has an in-house call center.
Currently, Meny has over 30 employees and is in the process of growing his business through the routine ups and downs that every business experiences over an 18-year history.
The Advice:
Competition
You are the solo in your space, so you can build your business based on your vision and strengths. But the client has to decide which agency to use, depending on each one’s uniqueness. Having this approach helps you grow your business within a vision, without constantly looking at and trying to copy everyone else (only to end up figuring out that they also don’t know what they are doing).
Growing Vs. Managing a Business
It’s pretty easy to grow a business today, with so much help available at your fingertips. But, the trick is moving from growing a company to managing the growth of the company. This is where most people fail because they realize that their sales, financials, marketing and operations don’t connect.
Building a scalable business means having all the moving parts of your business connected so that you can just pour more gas on the fire and everything will explode. As soon as you figure out how to connect all the different sections of your company, and keep them connected, you are on a roll and you will continue growing. As soon as one cog comes out, you get stuck and if you want to continue growing, you need to fix that cog back in.
Hiring for Skill
Many business owners build a business to maximize their own skill and talent. An alternative model is to build a business based on a vision, and hire more talented people than yourself with the skill to turn that dream into reality. In this model, your role as the business owner is to have unique ideas, originality and vision, plus you need to manage your employees to make sure that they are on track.
But, the key to making this model work is to get out there on the operational floor for a short while and actually do the work that you want others to do for you. This gives you insight into what skills and talents you need so that you can hire the right people. For example, you can only hire the right salespeople if you go out knocking on doors so that you know what it means to be a good salesperson.
Hiring the First Employee Many people hire their first employee because they are so busy and don’t have enough time in the day to cross off even half of their to-do list each day. The problem is, that if you think hiring gives you more time in your day, you will be disappointed. You need to take into account that the first few months are going to be worse while you train in, lead and manage your new employee.
The way to avoid this is to create an organizational chart. The chart should lay out all the different roles in your company with the responsibilities of each role. When you are solopreneur, your name will be in every box. When you are ready to hire, you choose one role that you either hate doing or are not good at, and hire to fill that position. This way you get value from that employee because you are immediately giving over an entire role.
Work-Life Balance
When we talk about work-life balance, many think that balance means fifty-fifty. This is wrong at core and never works. A healthy work-life balance means giving 100% of your energy and focus to whatever needs it at the time. It’s up to your judgment to decide what you need to invest your energy in, for how long and at what times. Once you have made that decision, give your full attention to whatever you are focusing on at that time. When you are at work, give it your all and when you are with your family, give that your all too. It’s all about quality rather than quantity.
The Struggle:
Meny founded his business 18 years ago and has been through many ups and downs throughout the years. All those years in business have given him a wealth of experience and wisdom, which is now bringing him many extremely valuable and exciting opportunities. But, the struggle he now faces is how to choose the right opportunities and stay focused on what he is trying to achieve with his business. Opportunities that he would have given anything for a few years back, he is now having to turn down, and it’s a tough choice.
The Breakthrough:
The key to deciding which opportunities to accept and which to decline is focusing and filtering.
Focus on what you want to be doing and say no to the things that don’t fall into that bucket.
Filter using strategic goals for each quarter and each year. Say no to the things that don’t help you achieve your goals and help you get to where you want to be.
Another tip to filter out those leads that are just wasting your time is to make it a little complicated for people to get through to you. For example, ask them to send you an email explaining what they would be doing for you before you spend any time on them. If they really want to work with you, they will put in that extra effort.
Quote:
We don’t have competition at all, however, we might compete on projects.
For Part 1 of this episode, where you can hear Meny’s journey, go to estierand.com/57-1
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