Company Culture Exists in One-Employee Companies

Work culture isn’t just about employee communication, meetings, and the environment. If you are a single-employee company, you have a work culture, especially if you are in customer service.

Designing a space that is comfortable to work in and welcoming for your clients is important, but that’s still not what I mean.

Everything relating to your clients is a huge part of your work culture.

• Do you answer the phone day and night to accommodate them, or do you set boundaries and only reply during work hours?

• Do you have online booking or are you playing phone tag for every appointment?

• Do you charge enough or too much to appeal to your target client?

• Do you schedule yourself the max number of massage or haircuts/colors you can possibly fit into the day, sometimes more?

• Do you leave time every day to work on your business marketing and other office tasks or are you doing this late at night when you should be resting?

If you plan to treat your employees with kindness, pay them fair wages, encourage them to have life/work balance… you deserve the same.

Of course, starting a company takes more effort than the average workday. You will have insane days and weeks trying to pull it all together. Some of that is the cost of starting up. Much of that can often be a lack of understanding about all the little things involved and not planning for them.

As entrepreneurs, we’re stubborn “I can do it myself” people. Because of that attitude we just keep our nose to the grindstone determined to figure it out. This can result in a lot of time-wasting mistakes otherwise, when will you ever stop working insane hours?

A decade in, I have 6 employees and a steady life-work balance. There were times I had two employees and was losing my mind. The only thing that changed was experience. I no longer waste time figuring it all out. I already have, for the most part. We all have to keep learning. But we don’t have to learn the hard, long, and expensive way. So whether it’s me or someone else, find a successful entrepreneur mentor. What you pay them will save you ten times that down the road.