How I Became The Two Hour CEO

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The Two-Hour-CEO.

So recently I have faced a dilemma. With my wife pregnant with Twin Boys, my life was about to change; but would I go quietly or kicking and screaming? I had to look at my life as it was, and work out where the incompatibilities were with a family with two newborn babies.

My wife is a successful professional, neither of us want to give up our work, but we also don't want to hand over all parenting responsibilities to a stranger and become ‘Weekend Parents’. So I had to figure out a way to allow enough time and energy to work on and grow my business, whilst also being a SuperDad.

I had several options, I could be a weekend father with full-time weekday nanny’s, I could put someone in charge of my business and be a full-time daddy, I could sell up, or I could get smart. I have always liked to start my day early, I like to workout early in the morning when the world is still sleeping and often had put in several hours of work before many reach their desk. I had a very brief thought that I could work before the babies were awake, which was quickly dismissed as my naivety that newborn baby’s would settle into an adult sleeping pattern at the click of my fingers.

I wasn't prepared to give up my business or career, I was too much of a control freak to hand over full responsibility to someone else, and so I was left with one other option…. I had to get clever, my working day had to be dynamic, fluid and I had to become more efficient… I had to work smarter, not longer.

I created a Two-Hour-Work-Day rule, where I would commit to two hours of work per day, regardless of how tired I was. I would work from home and be a stay-at-home-daddy for much of the day as my wife’s job wasn't so flexible. I also vowed that my business would actually grow during this period rather than just stem the tide and fire-fight issues that came up.

I had always wanted to be the CEO of my company, it’s actually where my skills lie. Alas I had never managed to fully detach from the day to day management of the company and was kept firmly rooted in the Managing Directors chair. This was my chance to break free, and our pregnancy gave me a finite amount of time to get things in order.

I didn't do this alone, I had staff that stepped up when needed, and I invested time in training each person in their new responsibilities. But really I feel that my Two-Hour-Work-Day would work for any small business even if you work alone, unless your job really is tied to time, for example a chiropractor, dentist or window cleaner.

So the big day came and Isaac and Francis were born, happy and healthy boys. At first the only routine in our house was chaos, and that was to be expected. I’m sure I walked around with a muslin square permanently on my shoulder for weeks. We slowly started to get a routine, and work came back on our radar. Now was my time to test whether my new job as the Two-Hour-CEO would work. My staff had done a good job keeping things going, now was my time to step into the CEO role and steer the ship.

My rules were very similar to FightClub, although by writing this I am obviously breaking the first rule of FightClub. My rules were that there were no rules, my working day would be fluid, I wouldn't stick to the same hours, they may not be in a solid block of two hours and they could be interrupted. The only principle I stuck to, was that I would prioritise the MOST valuable thing I could do for my business; Today. In fact I started to plan for the following day so that when I had a spare moment I was on it in a shot.

This did prove difficult at first, as urgent things or those that draw your attention would drain my time. Things like a little red number on my phone telling me how many emails I had or calls that I couldn't ignore. It wasn't until I re-found the four quadrants of time management matrix by Stephen Covey that I became more efficient. I realised that I was spending most of my time in the Urgent but Not Important section. This included replying to email straight away and other distractions and I vowed to spend most of my time in the top of the quadrant. The urgent/Important tasks are obvious but it would appear that the important but non-urgent tasks are the ones that always get put on the back burner. I realised that it was this section of the quadrant where most of the growth would be in my business, actually in my life in general.

When I had reoccurring important/Urgent tasks, I would look at them to first see if this was something that my office manager could deal with? A CEO should be looking ahead, not constantly down at his desk. So I refined my one rule, that I would of course deal with urgent things, but my FOCUS would be on the strategy and strategic planning side of the business. I wanted to play chess not feel like I was inside a Pin-Ball machine.

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In the first few months, our goal was to expand the business and increase our client list from the US and Canada. We discussed having people locally to attend trade shows etc, but this was diametrically opposite to our business model which was solely online, so this didn't sit well, plus it would have been a logistical nightmare.

So we created a Facebook, Instagram & Twitter marketing strategy to target our ideal clients. My tasks as the Two-Hour-CEO became more and more in the Important-Non-Urgent quadrant, thinking several steps ahead of the game. I am sure that many people will agree, particularly working mothers, that the pull you have between being a parent & a professional is at times significant. When you are at the office you feel like a bad parent, when you are with the kids you feel like you are neglecting your job. I do feel this is harder for women, my wife is asked regularly how she manages, ‘are you sure you are ok’ or ‘I bet your kids miss you’. Which I think is down-right rude and judgemental whether they meant it that way or not: I have never been asked that nor have I ever heard a man being asked the same questions.

We need to live dynamically for the year that we are in, we need to grow our businesses in a way that fits the year we are in, we need to bring our kids up for the year that we are in - Yes, Maybe Donald Trump will try to bring us back to the 1950s… But for now, I have never been happier with my role as the Two-Hour-CEO, my kids have a mixture of myself and my wife at home; but as they grow will not depend solely on one parent. They will learn the values of hard but clever working principles. They will see first hand equality and respect in a relationship and that life is fluid and dynamic and not fixed; compromise will be visible, whether they understand it or not.

Funnily enough, once I got out of the way and stopped micro-managing, my business has grown more in this period than ever before. The right staff stepped up and those that were not able to work on their own initiative left. I am now the Two-Hour-CEO of three companies, and of course there are days I may work for 10-12 hours, but my commitment is still just for two focused hours a day. An analogy from exercise springs to mind.. ‘The hardest step of a run is the first one’. My two hour commitment was a minimum, and allowed me to reduce the pressures I felt for not spending 12 hours grafting. However when I had time, I would sail past the two hours, as long as the work was still efficient and productive. The moment I felt myself drifting into procrastination, I would get up and do something different.

Once the boys started sleeping through and chaos was not a daily expectation, I actually looked into this a little deeper and found some research that shows the average America works for 8.8 hours per day. However the actual amount of PRODUCTIVE time in this average day is only 2 hours, 53 minutes. So maybe I am onto something, watch this space and I will try to come up with a more complete system rather than just the ramblings of a new father!

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