Are You on the Right Track? Part 2

Late in 1999, Mike and Sharon Baker took their first four-day weekend since he started his eBay business, driving several of their children to amusement parks in Texas and Oklahoma. The trip cost him several thousand dollars in lost sales, but it was worth it. He moved to a bigger home on the edge of Springdale, with a yard so big that he finally could buy Amanda the horse that she wanted. He didn't make it to all of his son's away games, but at home football games, he became a regular in the stands.

In his day-to-day routine too, Baker made more room for his family -- no matter what beckoned at work. He made a rule that any customer emails that weren't answered by 11:30 PM could wait until the next day. When his daughters, Amanda and Sherita, complained that the school bus took forever to get them home, he created a 3:30 PM break so he could pick them up from school. On the drive home, his daughters could talk about their world, and eBay wouldn't be mentioned.

Like many people trying to walk away from addictive habits, Baker still feels the urge to pour more energy into his business, now known as Art Prints Inc. He wants to widen his customer base with what he calls a "$10 million art-print giveaway," which might require him to hire as many as 15 temporary workers to help handle all the associated packing and shipping. He is looking at parcels of land that could give him a 7,000-square-foot warehouse -- far bigger than the converted three-car garage that he uses today.

Every time that he sketches out a new dream, though, his wife asks him: "How much control are you willing to give up?" If his business gets much bigger, she says, he won't be choosing what's for sale or corresponding with his customers. All that will be delegated, and it will feel less like his business. Already, he confides, "we're paying more in taxes than I ever thought we'd be earning in a year." Art Prints Inc. sells as many as 500 items a day, most at $6 apiece or more. Even after expenses, healthy profit margins remain.

In September, Baker's new priorities faced their toughest test yet. One of his uncles was hospitalized with advanced leukemia. Death was imminent, and various relatives came to stay at his house. For more than a week, his business operated at barely 10% of its usual clip so that Baker could have more time with his family.

Right about that time, Baker's eBay feedback rating topped 10,000, entitling him to a yellow shooting star next to his name. At other homes, that might have been worth celebrating, but the Bakers let it slip by almost unnoticed. The steady series of hospital visits left everyone drained. And when his uncle died on September 13, Baker suddenly had a new responsibility. Family members asked him to give the eulogy at the funeral a few days later.

"I felt nervous about it at first," Baker recalls. "I don't have much experience with public speaking. But they told me just to talk from the heart." He got up in church and shared some of his favorite memories of Uncle Joe: listening to him sing "Unchained Melody" on the porch, hearing stories about his deer-hunting trips to Colorado. "I don't think he ever killed anything," Baker said with a wry smile. "He just used to like to go and sit in the woods, looking at the trees. He said that it was the most beautiful country he'd ever seen."

After the service, his late-uncle's son came up to Baker and thanked him for saying all the right things. The two men hadn't spoken in a while; the son had moved north to Ohio and didn't get back to Arkansas much. But at that moment, Baker felt that his extended family was as close as it had been in a long time.

Can You Stay on Track by Yourself?

As hard as it is for surgeons, Internet entrepreneurs, and other free agents to get on the right track, at least they can do a lot by themselves to redefine their jobs. They aren't managers or employees in a large organization. The pressures in their lives come mostly from themselves, from their craft, or from their customers. They needn't answer to bosses or to dozens of colleagues who work so closely together on big projects that they inevitably create (and solve) problems for one another.

It's a different story inside a bigger enterprise. There, someone who single-handedly tries to rewrite the rules runs the risk of being seen either as a prima donna or as a slacker who just isn't committed to being a top-tier producer. Yet if you become reliant on the approval of others -- saying, "I'm not successful until every colleague and every client says I'm doing great work" -- then you will collapse exhausted and will still leave someone muttering that you didn't do enough.