Michael E. Gerber, an author and business expert once said, “If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business – you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”
So many business owners get burnt out fast when opening a new enterprise, because they think they must do it all themselves. Months even years into their business life, they still feel compelled to do everything themselves. Worst yet, they don’t give themselves time to work on their business growth, create planning strategies or focus on future opportunities. How can they, when they are trapped in the cycle of work IN their business instead of ON their business.
Business owners tend to be ‘doers’ and usually get into a particular business because they have a passion for the work. They don’t however, trust others to do what they do so well. Since they are bogged down with the day-to-day minutia of the business, they can’t see the forest for the trees.
It is important for business owners to not only train and trust their teams to run their business, they must also give themselves time to grow and evolve their business. They need to give themselves time to invest on personal development, networking, and education to help them become better leaders and more successful business owners.
How do you break the cycle? How do you as a business owner, give yourself time to develop your business beyond the daily grind? It’s all about establishing boundaries and calendaring time specifically focused on building strategies and planning for the future. First, you must build a team to help you succeed.
In June, ActionCOACH provided several articles and practical steps to help you build a winning team. In review, building a team that works without you takes several keys.
- Strong leadership
- Common Goals
- Rules of The Game
- Clear Action Plans
- Support Risk taking
- 100% involvement/inclusion
Robert Kiyosaki, a business guru, once said, “If you’re not working to get your business or investing operation to operate without you, you’re thinking too small. Think team and systems.”
Ongoing training and skill development then continues to keep your team on the cutting-edge and allows them to bring external knowledge to your organization.
Once you have a team that is handling the critical daily needs of the business, you as an owner can start working on your business. Having to hit too many targets yourself makes for a very frustrating business life.
| Working IN Your Business | Working ON Your Business |
| Making stuff | Education & Personal Development |
| Delivering stuff | Planning |
| Administrative stuff | Goal Setting |
| Paying invoices | Financial projections and forecasts |
| Hiring activities | Creating strategic alliances |
| Dealing with conflict | Automating processes and establishing systems |
| Handling calls | Setting strategic vision |
Set time aside and block time on your calendar to do the work required to really move your business forward. Be disciplined and set a schedule for the activities to help you grow your business.
Brad Sugars, CEO & Founder of the world’s largest and most successful business coaching franchise, ActionCOACH says “Working 9am-5pm pays the bills; Working 5am-9am builds wealth.”
This systematic approach allows you to strike a balance and begin to focus on the most important role of a business owner.
- Calendar time and stay disciplined.
- Even if your employees are perfect, they are likely to make the right decisions more than 70% of the time. Unless all your decisions are perfect, they are likely to match your batting average. SO, what have you got to lose?
- Get a coach or mentor to ensure you continue to challenge the status quo and build on your knowledge.
- Stay true to the vision of your business and ensure that all your activities are focused.
- Be honest with yourself and measure your business performance with data and with facts. Gut feel and instinct can only take you so far. You must use objective measures that will let you evaluate performance and progress.
Ultimately, you must let go of all the control. Consider that “66% of businesses make it to the 2-year mark and just 30% make it to the 10-year mark. One of the main reasons for this is because very few owners spend the required 20% of time working on their business and this contributes to businesses failing (gamechanger, 2019).
