Allow Yourself Labors Of Love

I have a confession. I'm pathologically persnickety when it comes to how I spend my time in my professional life.

Over the course of the last decade (or so), I've removed activities from my professional life that I do not enjoy. I don't enjoy phone calls, so I have https://SorryNoCalls.com. I don't enjoy managing people -- so I don't (despite the fact that my company, HubSpot [NYSE:HUBS], has over 700 employees).

Don't get me wrong, as founder of the company I will move mountains to help the company and my team grow. But, over many, many years I've discovered that the best thing I can do for the company in the long-term is to allow myself to focus on the things I love doing.

I attribute much of my modest success to the fact that I have allowed myself the luxury to spend time on labors of love.

I love teaching both in written form and otherwise -- so I do.

I love learning -- and so I do.

I love building things -- and so I do.

Here's a concrete example: For the past year or so, my primary labor of love at HubSpot has been inbound.org. As part of that effort, today, I launched a new tool/service that provides a dynamic list of the top marketing blogs in the world. Now, some might ask: Why would you do this? My answer: Because I thought it needed to exist, it fits into my larger mission of helping marketers connect and grow and because it makes me joyful.

Another example: Despite being Chief Technology Officer for the company, I still write code. Some might argue that there are probably better uses of my time. In the short-run, that's probably true. But in the long-run, it keeps me plugged in, helps me recruit better and it makes me joyful.

The "makes me joyful" is the most important part. Because I allow myself to do the things that bring me joy, I'm still having a great time at HubSpot. Candidly, I'm having more fun now when the company is 700+ people than I had when we were 70 people -- and even 7 people. And in the long run, especially for startups, I think founder happiness matters. Some of the best tech companies in the world still have their founders involved. Google. Facebook. Dropbox. The list goes on and on. What founders bring to the table is not just some domain expertise and talent. They bring love. To lose that is to lose something important.

So, some closing advice for entrepreneurs:

The most important things to do are the things that will keep you in love.

Of course, in the early years, you may not have the luxury to spend all/most of the time on things you love. That's OK. Just start somewhere and afford yourself even the small luxuries and take it from there.

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Dharmesh Shah is the founder/CTO of HubSpot, and co-author of the book "Inbound Marketing: Attract Engage and Delight Customers Online". If you want to make his day, check it out on Amazon or follow him on twitter @dharmesh.

Photo credit: fotolia / ~atthameeni