Will Working on Holidays Tear the Berry-Brewer Team Apart?

One of the interesting things about working with a business partner is that we don’t always agree on everything. This could be a terrible burden, of course, depending on exactly where the disagreement falls.

• Let’s say we disagreed on how to split our money, for example. Well, that’d probably be a deal breaker.
• What if we disagreed on the types of projects our company would accept? Nope, that wouldn’t work.
• Oh, what if Tamara wanted to have a brick-and-mortar business, and I wanted to work from home 100% of the time . . . Actually, we decided to cross that bridge when we come to it.

The point is that there are a lot of disagreements that could really cause us some trouble. Fortunately, whether or not we should work on holidays isn’t one of them.

Last week, Tamara posted about how she kind of feels like she should work on holidays. As she explained to me, her entire family has worked in the service industry (nursing, cinemas, etc.), so it just seems par for the course.

I was raised by entrepreneurs. My parents saw holidays as a way to offer some sort of “special” to their customers and then be closed for the big day to do family stuff. I’ll admit that I worked my fair share of Thanksgivings and New Year’s Eves when I was still a slave to the retail grind, but those days are behind me.

They’re behind me because I choose to leave them there.

Not too long ago, we wrote about how we define success as freelancers. In our case, it has a lot to do with being able to say “no” when we want. The flip side of this is that we can also say “yes” if we want. If Tamara is willing to accept a Christmas day deadline, then more power to her. I, on the other hand, am likely to take the entire week off to travel to Montana.

As for the time zone thing . . . well, we both get hosed on that one.