Balancing Business Operations and Client Fulfillment Work: A Business Owner's Guide

Business Operations and Client Fulfillment are two important parts of business execution and must run in tandem for a business to properly fulfill its full potential.

Depending on the role, you may lean one way or the other throughout your day-to-day work.

For example, as an AI Consultant, I participate heavily in client fulfillment of project work, which corners my days on proposals, in-depth technical questions, project management, code review, etc.

Others, such as a Business Analyst or a Project Manager, for example, are responsible for ensuring a project is on track or understanding places where the business can execute better from an operational standpoint, whether ensuring investment of operational expenditure or saving on it.

In the beginning, though, business owners often have to balance both and consistently alternate as the business gets up to full steam.

How does this look in my day-to-day?

From day to day, I'll alternate between:

1. marketing and sales work in tandem with other folks in the business.
2. client fulfillment, onboarding, project execution, and status updates.
3. strategic business growth, whether onboarding new service providers, meeting new ones, negotiating contracts, or understanding the market.
4. education. This is the most important as it ensures all other time commitments run smoothly and timely. Often, this is about giving yourself time to get ahead of the curve and allows you to bend business growth to your advantage throughout day-to-day work.

Client fulfillment jumps to the top of my list immediately so they feel respected and heard with business operations and strategic business growth jumping in with an undefined formula to ensure we're going the proper speed to meet and exceed our goals.

Education gets swapped in regularly with an overflowing inbox and numerous Chrome tabs amongst podcasts, books, and research papers. These keep my mind sharp and allow me to propose solutions and collaborate with clients in industries I never thought possible.

Knowledge and Wisdom are often considered power, but it's all about how effectively we solve the world's problems and work together for mutual benefit.

Handling personal schedule troubles

Inevitably, people will also cite their schedules as trouble, and is about the life you want to live.

Living "small", whatever that means to someone or to a community is a great thing to strive for so long as all members of the community have implicitly and explicitly acknowledged that as a stated goal or desire.

A community can become toxic when a member wants to grow and the group doesn't, which puts them in a strange power imbalance and encourages the person wanting to grow to make their way forward.

Personally, what I like to do is take time in the morning to grab breakfast, watch a quick YouTube video, and get to work immediately.

Depending on the workload, I'll start earlier or later, but always intend to close on my target as soon as possible.

Throughout the day, there are food breaks and walks, which can break up the monotony of the day and give me time to process the current events. It also gives me time to course correct in a meaningful timeframe and serve people better on the backend.

Depending on the volume of work for the day, this also leads to a couple of episodes on Netflix with my wife in the evening and a bit of talking afterward, which gets sidelined in a particularly busy season.

Days will usually start at 5:30am and end about 8:30pm or so, but this is a product of how I've personally chosen to work and do not force so on anyone else.

Again, though, this is all about the life you want to live and should be easily adjustable as you move forward.

Building the life you want to live

Balance, or a seeming lack of it to outside observers, is all about the life you want to live as you grow older.

Some will want to be an employee and that is ok. Others will want to do achieve something greater and that is ok too.

Keep track of what you want for yourself and the people in your life and go achieve it.

Best of luck!