Joseph Cacioppo's workday starts at 5 a.m., when his house in Gainesville, Florida is still quiet and no one is calling or emailing. For the next two hours, the time belongs to Cacioppo Bookkeeping, the practice he runs on his own. At seven, he shuts his laptop and spends time with his four children before his full-time job as a software development manager begins later in the day.
His practice grew out of years of helping his wife run her photography business, and out of a lifelong love of math and putting things in order. Nineteen months in, it has 16 recurring clients and a few cleanups on the go. Most of the work still happens in those two hours.
Joseph has put the time he's won back into sleep, unhurried meals, his workouts and his children rather than into more work, and he says plainly that he's glad he did. "It's also the mental bandwidth," he says. This is the story of a bookkeeper who protects his mornings, so the rest of the day can belong to himself and his family.