You might already be familiar with HubSpot. The company offers a software solution that tackles marketing, sales and service. You can use their tools for everything from contact insights to lead generation, meeting scheduling to knowledge base management. But, the point of today’s article isn’t to provide a deep dive into what HubSpot does or why the company has been so successful at what it does. Rather, it’s about the lesson we can learn from how HubSpot approaches productivity.
Now, of course I fully recognize that a relatively large company like HubSpot is going to have distinctly different challenges than a solitary blogger or individual Internet marketing professional. However, many of the underpinning philosophies and approach to work can just as easily be applicable to business of just about any size. And it starts with abandoning the idea of typical Monday to Friday, 9-to-5 kind of work schedule.
The Hours Don’t Matter
On this blog, I’ve written at least a few times about how time is money. Whenever I see people waiting in line, sometimes for hours on end, to save a few bucks, I can’t help but to shake my head. The thing that you’re getting “for free” is only “free” if your time is worthless. It’s all about opportunity cost. Rather than waiting in line, you could be doing something far more productive… like working on your business.
The most traditional perspective on the “time is money” mantra, though, is the conventional work arrangement. As an employee, you are literally trading hours for dollars. You put in the time, and your employer compensates you monetarily for that. This is true whether you’re paid hourly or by salary; the net effect is the same. But, as we all know, the actual hours worked don’t necessarily correspond to moving the needle. It’s what you do with those hours that matters.
That’s a big part of the reason why an accountant or a lawyer earns more per hour, on average, than the guy flipping burgers at the local fast food restaurant. Not all hours are made alike; it’s how much value you are generating in those hours.
Flexible Work Days
When you run a brick-and-mortar kind of business, your actual business hours matter. A clothing shop is probably going to make more money if it’s open during the day than if it only opens in the middle of the night. However, when your business is “virtual” or “digital” or “online,” then the actual hours that you’re working don’t matter nearly as much. And this is where HubSpot’s Culture Code asserts a rather important work philosophy:
“Results matter more than the hours we work.”
Indeed, I’ve said that time and location freedom are the two most valuable aspects of being your own boss and running your own online business. Whether you decide to put in the hours on a Monday morning or a Wednesday afternoon, late into Saturday’s twilight hours or on Tuesday after dinner makes no real difference. As long as you achieve the desired results.
In the case of HubSpot, as best as I can understand it, the company offers unlimited vacation time to its employees as long as the work gets done and the targeted results are achieved. The flexibility of these work days, which also allows for working from home or taking on as obscure hours as you’d like, is even greater when you work for yourself.
Focus on Success, Not on Work
It’s totally true that anyone can do it, except not everyone can do it. One of the key differentiators here is that you need to have an intense internal drive to succeed, because no one is looking over your shoulder or pressuring you to achieve your goals. That’s all up to you.
Just recognize that it doesn’t matter if it takes you 10 hours or 100 hours to write your next ebook or develop your next online course or edit your next YouTube video. What matters are the results you achieve. So, get out there and achieve something great.