Building a Healthy Work-Life Balance as a Gunsmith

This month I want to offer up some advice concerning your work life balance. My business has been running for thirteen years, and I have learned a lot about makes and models of firearms. I have learned how to do new services and offerings to expand my business. I have taught myself to be a business owner. All those things I have learned by practicing, reading, and research. The one area I struggled in was balancing my work life and home life.

When I started my business, I worked a regular 8-5 job. After work I would rush home, stuff some food in my face and immediately go to the shop. I would work another three to four hours, possibly longer, and crawl in the bed exhausted. My weekends were spent in the shop as well. I hardly took a break, and I did that for seven years or more. At the time I thought I was just doing what needed to be done. I had made an investment, and I needed to make sure I justified it by working as long and as hard as I could. Gunsmithing has never felt like a job to me. The quote “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” was and is still true for me today. If I could afford to work on firearms for free, I would. There is truth in that quote, but just because you love the job does not mean you need to chain yourself to the bench and work eighty plus hours a week. I once thought that if I worked hard enough and turned firearms around quickly that my business would flourish. I also had the mindset that if I had guns in the shop that meant job security. So, I would delay working on guns to make sure I always had money coming in the door. Thinking these ways just added more time in the shop and in my mind. Thoughts were always fixed on the shop. Am I making enough? Am I producing a quality product? Did I order the parts that I needed? As time went on, I noticed that the quality of my work started to dip, the money started to get tighter, I would forget to order those parts, and at times I would misplace parts. I would make careless mistakes that I would have never made in the past. Fatigue is a real thing even when you are doing what you love. Scratching that freshly blued gun when you are putting it back together may require you to have to start all over again. More time, more stress. I was also neglecting my personal life. I hardly saw my wife at all. She could not make plans to do things she wanted to do thinking that I would quit early or not work on a Saturday. Vacations hardly ever happened. The stress kept piling on more stress. Things around the house would not get fixed or the lawn was not mowed. Having the passion to work on firearms doesn’t mean you have to work harder at it, but you can work smarter and that will help you balance your work life with your personal life.

Processes and Tools

How can a process balance your work life? I wondered the same thing. I figured my process was working just fine. Gun in, work on gun, gun out. Simple. But when you have thirty plus guns in the

shop, can that same mentality work? Possibly for a short time, but it is not sustainable. I am still learning how to fine tune the operations side of my business but the changes I have made allow me to separate from the business.

I started using QuickBooks to keep me organized with the customers, the work I performed, and items that I had ordered for their firearm. It was a huge welcome change. No more working from memory and what to charge who. Probably the best tool I have incorporated just started recently. I found out about Jotform. This tool allows you to use your smartphone, iPad, or computer to input your customers info. I have the customer fill it out on an iPad. They write in their own words what they want done to their firearm. Their contact info is readable. There have been many times when I have finished a person’s gun and can’t figure out what their phone number is to let them know that it is ready. These two tools also are linked. Once the information goes into Jotform, QuickBooks is automatically populated. Time saved.

After the customer fills out the form on the tablet, I enter the important data into my A&D Book and print off the form above. I attached to the firearm, and it gets placed in the vault. When it’s time to work on the firearm, I have all the details I need to get the work done. Time saved again. The last area and was probably the hardest thing to change, was getting rid of the clutter. I should have learned from one of the jobs I had in the past. I worked for a Japanese company, and they set up a process that everything has its place. Outlines of tools were drawn on pegboard, when you are finished with the wrench, you put it back. I apparently must have enjoyed looking for my punch set for 30 minutes because it was lost in the clutter that I called my bench. Get rid of the clutter, there is a place for everything, time saved.

I am a spiritual person, and I have had many discussions with God as I work in the shop. One thing He told me a few years back was “You (Me) worry about getting the guns out of the shop, and I’ll (God) worry about getting guns in the shop for you to work on.” I have been blessed beyond my wildest dreams. He has kept his promise.

Proverbs 18:16

“A man’s (or woman’s) gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.”

Enjoy your life.

Semper Fi!

Written by: David Johnson, Leatherneck Gunsmithing