Which means they have no doubt discovered all of the inadequacies of their home office, perhaps including the need to share it with a spouse.

Why not consider your own apps and time management tools and ask yourself whether they are helping to eliminate inefficiencies in your business, or merely hiding them.

The post I’m featuring below is one that does a really good job of pulling together some market data at a time when it seems so hard to get accurate information.

However you exit, it will take years to plan it well. I used to give seminars all over the country teaching business owners how to value and sell their companies. One of the jokes I was trained by the company to use was to ask the business owners how they planned to leave their businesses, and then add: “Horizontally?”

I explained to her that the difference is not in what you do (great customer service) but how you do it? In other words, how—exactly—do you deliver on that promise? Not what, but how.

My advice is that you should be doubling down, mostly on marketing. I’m reminded of Warren Buffet’s maxim: “Get greedy when people are fearful, and fearful when people are greedy.”

Have a yearning to see a great movie…in a movie theater? Why not invite someone to go with you. Are you scratching your head saying, “But David, the theaters are closed!”

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t give yourself every chance to come out on top. Things will change, and to tap into those changes you may need to begin getting market intelligence from sources you’ve never considered in the past.

Now, just imagine a key influencer, partner, or even current client having this cool box show up on their doorstep, perhaps unexpectedly. This could be the ultimate Trojan horse and would say so much about you and how you do business, and of course would be tied into your new strategy of doing more work remotely.

I know that you, too, want to be in a far better place five years from now, so wouldn’t you agree that a mere 15% investment in your future is time and money well spent?

Which means we should ask which is more powerful, the goal or the reward? And, acknowledging the curious workings of the human mind, it’s not that far of a leap to wonder: “What if we just go ahead and get the reward first?”

Now if you’re not a dog person, the rest of this post won’t make much sense to you. But if you are a dog person, you’ll know that there is no one you’d rather have with you in that solitude than that canine family member.