Usually, one of the positives of working at a traditional job is that the schedules are predictable in a sense of you work from say 9-5 and the rest of the day you are free to attend other things. However for self employed people who run their own business this usually means unpredictable schedules and having to work around the clock to serve your client’s needs. Foe example, imagine running a web hosting business where you literally shut every customer support avenue off right at five o clock and if the service goes down at 6 o clock all your customers are left without service until you open at 9 the next morning. Not exactly a good business strategy huh?
That’s what I saw recently with one business where having communications with his client for on demand problems is fairly important. However, they literally leave everyone in the dark after 5pm which actually surprised me on how they actually still had clients considering virtually every other business in the same category has reasonable around the clock access just in case something comes up. Usually for a lot of larger businesses they get around this by having offshore customer support agents to handle issues when it is night time locally. The office may be closed to handle things in-person but people can still use services online or through the phone.
This reminds me of restaurants that decide to close when everyone else that works standard employee job hours are off because they want to enjoy the day too. It really depends on the type of business of course. For example, most people wouldn’t expect a corner store around the neighborhood to be opened around the clock. But even in those cases I highly doubt people close the doors right after school when that is probably a prime time to get good traffic.