Above and below find 2024's third mid-week special edition in Overdrive Radio's series of Partners in Business shorts culled from a long owner-operator business-focused talk at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March with Eric Harley of Red Eye Radio.
This episode extends from the first couple, expanding on the necessity of close business analysis in near-real-time to keep tabs on costs and profits, the start-up necessity of stocking that pantry and doubling down on saving when markets are hot for the lean times. We’ve been in one of those, by some estimates, going on two years at this point.
While owner-operators might scoff at the notion of a vacation, Red Eye Radio host Eric Harley notes early on, the achievement of personal goals, whatever they are, is a necessary part of owner-operators' business planning.
In the new edition of the Partners in Business book, noted Overdrive Editor Todd Dills in the talk, there's an update in Chapter 17 that proffers the notion of work-life balance. The idea itself is problematic for many small business owners simply because, as is the case for many owner-operators, the two are totally inseparable.
[Related: Trucking's feast-or-famine cycles: Stock your pantry as insurance against it]
That doesn't mean there aren't steps you can take to bring unity between work and life without turning your job into a 24/7 go-go-go nightmare. "Rather than going out and running all 48 states all the time," Dills said as an example, "build the routines that will get you home, build the customers that will get you home, build relationships with the brokers that are going to get you back to where you need to be."
