Building Boundaries

Published September 23, 2009

Chris Melo Chris Melo has always worked. He started doing framing and concrete work when he was 16, and put himself through college by working three jobs – a retail gig, construction and mowing lawns.

Now, after two decades as the owner of Albuquerque, N.M.-based MBC Landscaping and one divorce, he’s learned the importance of not working.

“I meet a lot of people new to the industry. When people are new, they are very hungry and they work 24/7,” he says. “They don’t set up any boundaries with their personal lives and with their clients. I tell guys: Don’t get sucked into that. I speak from experience.”

Especially in today’s world – and economy – contractors can be on all day, every day. A client calls and wants you there Saturday night to fix a light or wants to talk all night Sunday because his grass isn’t as green as his neighbor’s.

When he first started, Melo did the same thing. He worked all the time. He didn’t know when to stop, because he so badly wanted to grow his business. Then his wife found herself a boyfriend.

Now, Melo has a new answer for clients who want him to stop over on the weekend: “No.”

“I work Monday through Friday. If you’re serious, you’ll fit it into your schedule,” he says. “I do put in long days, but at the same time, I have boundaries.”

Now he works to establish a boundary upfront: His voicemail message asks callers to please give him 24 hours to return their call. Not everyone likes it – and some people choose other contractors because they want someone right away – but Melo’s OK with that. His own employees know that he won’t pick up the phone in the evening.

“They all know that. If they want to get a hold of me, they know, don’t bother calling me at 7 or 8 at night because I won’t answer the phone,” he says. “Unless it’s my alarm company, I don’t answer the phone much after 5:30 p.m. I just don’t want to deal with it.”

MBC has 10 employees, and does primarily residential design/build work and hardscapes. Last year the company pulled in $1.5 million. And the stress of running a small business can get to a guy – Melo not only has to support himself, his wife and two children, but also his 10 employees and their families.

“If I don’t show up to work, my company doesn’t function,” he says. “If I don’t have my head screwed on straight when I come into work in the morning, then my company isn’t making money.”

To help himself keep his head on straight, he takes vacations – every Memorial Day, Labor Day and the Fourth of July; rides his bike; goes to the movies and hangs out at home and watches his beloved Red Sox on television.

But the best reward and motivator to keep both his business afloat and at bay, he says, is his family. “For me, it’s at the end of the day when I get to go home and I get to see my kids,” says Melo, the father of a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy. “You have those days that the shit just doesn’t work. When I have a really crummy day, it makes me realize just with a simple conversation with my kids, all that stuff that’s gone on in the world, all the stuff I need to worry about is right there at home.”

He says a call from his son with a really important question about Spiderman helps keep things in perspective.

“What a lot of people don’t figure out until it’s too late is you’ve got to have that personal life. Because if you don’t have the personal life, you’re not going to be able to do the business portion,” Melo says.

“You’ve got to be able to unplug from whatever it is you do … and not think about it and not worry about it. And as a business owner, that’s a very difficult task to do, because it’s always in the back of your head.

“I wasn’t good at it, because I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist,” he adds. “It cost me a marriage.”