The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #115
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- Always On-Call: The Reality for Every Entrepreneur
- Only in Switzerland: When Tech Entrepreneurs Meet in a Shooting Range
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
TACTICS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Always On-Call: The Reality for Every Entrepreneur
Like parenting, entrepreneurs can’t opt out of crises. Stay calm, always carry your tools, and fix problems wherever you are.
Life is ugly sometimes. Things happen at the worst possible moment, and bad things seem to happen simultaneously.
Some people call it Murphy’s Law.
Parents know this happens now and then, and they deal with the problems when they occur. Just think of an injured kid that needs medical care ten minutes before you need to leave for an important meeting.
Entrepreneurs should know that shit happens now and then, too. But from my own experience, many entrepreneurs get surprisingly agitated when the shit hits the fan, and are surprisingly unprepared for such situations.
Let’s look at three strategies for coping with life’s unpleasantries.
1. Always Be On-Call
At Yonder, the B2B company I co-founded, we have an on-call team to handle issues and urgencies with our server infrastructure 24/7. This team operates on a roster and is compensated for their stand-by and intervention duty.
But sometimes, interventions go beyond keeping the server infrastructure alive. We recently had to recover data on our production system. This didn’t just involve a large part of our technical team, but also our customer team: Somebody had to maintain the communication with our customers until the issue was fixed.
Where was I when this serious incident happened? I was attending an event on aircraft accident investigation halfway across the country. Did our customers or our team care where I was? Of course not. As an entrepreneur, you’re always on duty, just like a parent.
2. Always Carry Your Laptop
Because I’m always on duty, I always carry my laptop with me. Actually, not just my laptop, but my entire office. Over all those years of working remotely, I have learned how to pack all my office tools into a 10kg backpack.
Does this mean that I’m always working? Not at all! But I am ready to step in if my attendance is needed, wherever I am. During my holidays, when I’m attending a family gathering, or when I’m visiting friends.
Is this stressful? Not at all! It’s like with kids. You know that they might have an accident and you need to run to the doctor with them at short notice, but you also know that this doesn’t happen every day. So stay calm, my fellow entrepreneurs.
3. Be Proactive with Your Plannable Work
Now you might think, “How does this guy get his work done if he is always on stand-by to step in for issues and urgencies?”
Well, I’m not sitting idle waiting for something urgent to pop up. I work on other stuff: plannable work, thinking, admin tasks, and technical concepts. None of this is urgent — unless you set them aside and start working on them only five minutes before their deadlines. For this, I have developed a system to proactively work on “block” and “admin” tasks, maintaining my capacity for short-notice issues and urgencies.
This system also helps me stay productive when my schedule turns upside down at short notice. No matter if a prospect cancels the call at short notice, you miss your train, or a meeting is cancelled because somebody is sick, one view into my “block” and “admin” task list is enough to fill the gap with productive work. And besides getting a non-urgent task off your plate, you’re creating capacity to attend to an urgency if needed.
Conclusion
Just like parents can’t complain all the time, complaining isn’t an option for entrepreneurs. Just like with kids, get used to the unpredictability of emergencies and the need to step in on short notice.
Not convinced yet? Then I strongly advise you to stay clear of entrepreneurship. There are many well-paid jobs in public-sector administration, for example.
STRATEGIES FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Only in Switzerland: When Tech Entrepreneurs Meet in a Shooting Range
An anecdotal insight into three entrepreneurs meeting at a compulsory shooting exercise mandated by the Swiss active reserve system
In Switzerland, my home country, we still maintain an active reserve military system. Under this scheme, I’ve been an active reserve officer for more than 20 years.
I am a big advocate of our active reserve system, although it has a few challenges besides the benefits.
Often misunderstood in an international context, our active reserve system is best explained by anecdotal evidence rather than business-like pros and cons.
Phase 1: The Shooting Exercise
Active reserve duty in Switzerland comes with the obligation to attend at least one shooting exercise every year. Yes, we’re the folk who keep their army guns at home.
A shooting exercise is a surprisingly simple happening over here. You load your army gun into your car, drive to the shooting range, and do the shooting exercise. The ammunition is provided at the shooting range, and that’s also where you get your attestation that you completed your annual compulsory shooting training.
No passport controls, no bullet-proof vests, no camouflage. Just a few guys in civilian clothes with… army guns.
Phase 2: The Network
If you’re not into shooting and you just want to do the compulsory part, it’s perfectly fine to collect your attestation after the shooting exercise and leave.
However, that’s not what most people do. Most people enjoy the company at shooting exercises. There are broadly two social modus operandi for a shooting exercise: Either do the compulsory shooting exercise with your colleagues or friends after work and go for a beer together afterward. Or you are a member of a shooting club or an officers’ association and attend one of the shooting exercises they regularly organize. And of course, those clubs and associations also stay for a social gathering after the shooting.
Phase 3: The IT Discussion
That’s exactly what I did last weekend. I went for a shooting exercise with my local officers’ association somewhere in rural Switzerland.
After the exercise ended shortly before noon, we all sat together, having brunch and talking about life, the universe, and everything.
And by coincidence, I sat next to two other tech entrepreneurs. Yes, somewhere in the hills of rural Switzerland. Our guns neatly stacked behind the table, we discussed IT architecture, cyber security, and the pros and cons of agile development.
That’s the beauty of the active reserve system. Some people meet randomly because of an obligation to participate in regular shooting exercises and end up discussing entrepreneurial topics. So I didn’t leave the shooting exercise with just my obligations met, but also with new inputs for my business and a few new acquaintances.
This is the place I call home.
About Me
I’m a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three — writing about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management from hard-won experience. No AI, no fluff, no promos. Just plain-text insights for people building and leading under pressure.
When I’m not solving problems, I find clarity in the mountains around Zermatt.
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