Hello All

Welcome to the second of my Dog Blogs.

First things first, my human, Renee, has had a couple of calls asking her what my voice is like... well, it's kind of a cross between Keith Richards and Cap'n Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean!  Savvy?

Last week I talked about balance in business - it's like carrying a BIG stick.  This week I thought I'd give you the benefit of my considerable wisdom about a different sort of balance - work life balance.

First of all, there's no such thing as 'work life balance'; there's just life and then you choose what you fill it with.  Mostly I choose to fill mine with chasing sticks, sleeping and licking my... well, let's just say 'keeping clean'.

Oh, and I have to work by looking cute, but overall I think my life is pretty good.

Now, take my humans as an example of balance that's wrong... even if it is only for a few months.

I would say that they have got the business balance bit just about right.  They concentrate on marketing and then they get the work done.  The life thing, though, is all over the place.  They work all kinds of hours to make sure everyone is kept happy... including me.

I don't mind that but a few more sticks wouldn't go amiss every so often.

The only thing that I can say in my human's favour is that the have a plan to start working less.  They know that a few months of really hard slog will mean that they can back off soon.

I don't believe it meself.  I think they'll go on to something else, but it's their dinner, if you see what I mean.

The point I'm getting to is this... imagine your business a chew toy with four arms on it.  Sometimes you'll get one arm being pulled harder than the others and this is okay for a little while, but gets boring if it happens all the time.  To make the game really interesting you have to have all four bits being pulled equally hard... then you have a really good game.

Managing the business, winning customers, working and having time off all have to be balanced, savvy...

But here's a little lesson about 'balance, averages and the short term...'

A German was shooting at rabbits (prefer to chase them, meself) and missed to the left hand side.  He aimed again and missed by the same amount to the right hand side.  He put his gun away and his companion asked 'Vot are you doing?'  'Vell, on average I know ze rabbit iz dead!'

Sometimes you have to get out of balance.  But have a plan to get back into it, savvy?