Day 8 - Realizations

I imagine that I will have many posts titled "realizations". I had one yesterday during my 12 hour day. I'm hoping it pays dividends to go the extra mile and that begins with the number of hours I put into the job. I began at 6am every day this week so far and left the office around 5:45pm. It's a long day, and I still find I don't have enough hours in the day. If I were a single person I think I would bring my sleeping bag and work through the night if I could. We've got a shower at the office....I think it would be doable. But it's more important my kids and wife see me for a few hours before they hit the bed at night. They're only little once. So I realized during my day yesterday that I spent the entire day working on pricing for a bid that I'm turning in later this week. It's a large project. I expect it to be around $700K. But I've been spending so much time on this opportunity that I know the important outside of the box ideas that I've been needing to work on have suffered. I realized yesterday that I HAVE to quit working like this if I want to grow my book of business to grow to my goals. I need to work with my employer to define steps in how we can make this happen. I don't want to be an estimator, I want to be a salesperson. I could train my 14 year old son to do the estimates. The software that we use to do the estimating is so easy to use that it makes me feel like I'm wasting my talent. I'm a salesperson, and my people need me, but I feel trapped behind this desk. I need to figure this out.