Here I am sat in the Cheshire offices on Christmas Eve beavering away thanking our Customers & Contacts for their valued business this year (a critical start-up year in a business we started in mid-Jan, where every deal has been like winning the lottery to us and we are thankful of every single piece of support we’ve had from many many Customers & valued Contacts all year), when in an email to an old colleague this morning it suddenly dawned on me what busy fools we can often become in the wrong corporate environments.

I had a bit of a moan to some of those that can’t be bothered keeping in touch with me after my 12 loyal years working for the company I sold my first technology recruitment business too in 2007, about their lack of ability to stay in touch during 2019, and the resounding response from some of them was “Sorry, I’ve been working flipping too hard to keep in touch” (or words to that effect).

At first I was about to respond to them with “you haven’t been working as hard as me in my new business start-up I can assure you, and I still managed to stay in touch” etc……

But then I actually realised…..it dawned on me that the above response from me would be an utter lie. I realised that without the utter internal clap-trap / constant distractions from doing the real job / internal bun-fights about who’s allowed to work on what business (whilst much of the competition are just getting on and filling the business!) / pointless meetings about nothing and internal politics surrounded by ‘corporate climbing’ arse-kissers that will lob anyone under a bus for self-promotion or recognition…. which I wasn’t having to tackle for a good 50% of my otherwise productive day anymore, I’ve actually become considerably more productive and I don’t work anywhere near as hard as before anymore (yet I’m still producing more output and being more effective). I now produce more work output, have more family time, far less stress at work, enjoy it more and work less.

I think we’ve all found ourselves down this dead-end in the past in certain jobs. Well if you’ve just realised you are down another one after reading this…..get out of that job or do something about it if you have the influence to make change happen!. We are a long time dead, don’t waste your best working years wasting your time (or more to the point, letting others waste it for you!).

‘Try and avoid being a Busy Fool next year in 2020’, it’s an easy trap to fall into in some organisations!. That is my shared epiphany moment as we at som3 sign off what has been an amazing start-up year, where we smashed our already challenging Year 1 budget by September (month 8) and are racing into Year 2 with January 2020 already being our record month before it’s even started. Bring on 2020!.

Happy New Year All

Steve Morrisey

Som3 Managing Director & Founder