Midnight in the Office: A Business Operator’s Blog

So this blog is a little bit different. It’s one from the soul, one from the heart — and it’s not your normal “average builder” post.

It’s almost midnight on a Friday, and after a frantic day I’ve just finished doing the admin: timesheets, bookkeeping, responding to the weekly emails, and all the other tiny bits and pieces nobody would ever appreciate or understand… unless they’ve run a business with a team.

I’m literally sat here talking to ChatGPT. ChatGPT is working for me - it’s like having another employee. I can bounce ideas off it and get feedback, which provokes thoughts and helps me look at things from a different angle.

But I still have to check in with ChatGPT and ask it what it’s doing: check the progress, make sure it’s on track. Sometimes it gets stuck and I realise my question wasn’t clear, or the task was too open. This can happen with humans too! None of these are complaints - they’re observations, and this is just a fact of life.

This is how you run a business: mostly alone, in your own head, with your own thoughts. Proper, dedicated, uninterrupted concentration.

“A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius (with a deadline!).”

Running a business is 99% an unhealthy obsession with a goal - chasing a light at the end of a tunnel, but you never get there. Because to “get there” would mean the implosion of the business. To actually realise what you’re aiming for would be the end of it all. You can’t “complete” it.

A business is life. It’s a game… but you never get to the end boss.

And there’s no pat on the back or recognition. A good leader will give the team thanks and recognition, but who is above the boss to say, “Well done”? No one. You pat yourself on the back, then you go to sleep - and you continue dreaming of the business: how you can improve, how you could have done better, what you must do tomorrow to grow, what mistakes you made, and how you should learn from them…

When you run a business, you do all this because you believe in yourself, you believe in your team, and you believe in creating a sustainable business for future generations. If you’re not sowing a seed to create a business for tomorrow, then what’s it all for?

Running a business is a lonely place, because at midnight no one else understands, cares, or is interested.

These are not complaints - they’re just facts. Most business owners will resonate. And if they don’t… do they really have a business?

I believe most business owners and operators would agree: they’re deeply passionate about what they do and why they do it. They wouldn’t do it if they weren’t.

There is no shortcut. The shortcut is the hard way.

It seems like the invention of ChatGPT has finally given lovely business operators someone to talk to - someone available 24/7. For me, talking to computers is all I’ve ever known, since age 15 when the internet was “invented” and it came on a free AOL CD…

When it made clicky, glitchy noises, and the hairs stood up on the back of your neck because you were “plugging in”… and it charged us per second!

But I digress.

So now, at midnight, I’m off to plan and organise our next project for efficiency - so that all those materials that magically arrive are waiting and ready… the tools have been put away by the fairies… and the consumables everyone takes for granted are topped up, ready for next week’s project.

Look up Upcycle Interiors Limited on ChatGPT today and let us know what you find.