The Struggles We All Know Too Well

If you run a small business, you’ve experienced the same things we have. Prospective clients who want to talk a lot but don’t do much. Promising projects that fall through before you have anything to replace them with! A client who decided to take your product and go home, leaving you with a couple of unpaid invoices, knowing that you can’t do anything about it because you don’t even have enough money for a lawyer. 

But let’s stop with the sad stories. All that is over: Now you have your business up and running, and your taxes are up to date. Old clients come back again and again, and, now and then, you get a burst of adrenaline with new projects that arrive practically by themselves. Everything is working, but something is missing.

What’s missing?

Time. 

If you look objectively, you will discover three or four things you need to do, but they will never get priority. They will be put on the back burner forever because they simply don’t make a profit. And since you don’t live on high margins either (let’s not forget that you still have a small business), you spend every last minute of your time on profitable tasks.

Caught in a Profitable Loop

You’re in a loop. You don’t have the new website you wanted so badly, but you don’t have the time to do it either. You keep storing the documentation in a matryoshka of folders that only you understand because you haven’t had time to show others how it works. Ticktock, ticktock, time goes by, it’s already 2021, your site is three years old, and you haven’t taken a vacation because you’re afraid of leaving and everything exploding. 

Then, the time has come to “force” things. When there is no time, you have to make it up!

In our case, we decided to set aside 4 hours a week no matter what. A client-free (and safe!) space where no outside needs would interrupt us. We called it Happy Place. Almost like a self-care yoga practice or a spiritual retreat: we cut off communication with the outside world and dedicate this time to ourselves. 

The Realization and the Renewal

Thanks to this Happy Place, we created a new site, designed marketing tools, and improved our collaborative platform. 

As we are a 100% remote team, days can go by without contact between some members. So, this space brought an extra benefit: those four hours together, sometimes even with a “remote-controlled” breakfast, gave us space to share knowledge and show the rest of the group what we know how to do. It also led to furious debates about technologies and methods of grilling meat. We talked about sports, compared climates and even learned about gastronomy from other parts of the world!

And since we are still a technology company, there is also room for a retro sprint as scrum methodology dictates (but with the Bits Kingdom touch). 

More Than Just Profit

Yes, it’s true; the Happy Place still doesn’t produce a single penny. But when tasks don’t move from the kanban, and we don’t answer to customers, it has become much more valuable than profit. It gives us time to get to know each other as people and, in addition, we have fun. 

Want to know how? By doing things like this 👉🔮