Is your business driving you crazy? It’s easy to get frustrated with your business – especially if being at work kept you from enjoying the holidays… But you don’t have to be a slave to your business! You can break free and learn to love your business again! It won’t be easy, but it all starts with learning to let go and take a step back. You have to create systems, learn to delegate, build your team and free up your own time so you can focus on business growth and have a more balanced life.

To get started, ask yourself a few questions:

• When was the last time you took a real vacation? Could you leave your business unattended for weekend, week or a month without it suffering?
• Are you able to “turn it off” when you’re not working or do you spend all your time thinking about your business?
• Are you directly involved in every transaction, decision and problem or do you have systems and a team you trust to handle those without you?
• As the owner, are you also the technician for your business? Have you trained anyone to do that work in your absence?

At The Growth Coach, we understand that many business owners struggle with these same questions. You’ve built the business – it’s your baby – and it’s hard to let go of even the smallest task. But if you’re going to love your business again and if you want to build a secure future for you and your family, you have to learn to let go a little.

A great way to step back from the busyness is to transition yourself from “business owner” to “CEO.” When you think of yourself as the business owner, it’s easy to make yourself personally responsible for every task within the business. But that busyness is hurting you, your business and your bottom line. If you start thinking of yourself as a CEO, you can treat your business like a separate entity and start to hire, train and build a team that can take on the tasks you were doing as the business owner. A CEO is an ultimate leader – not someone you call with every small problem or question.

Having trouble thinking of yourself as a CEO? Try this… If you’re a CEO, what should your hourly wage be? $50 an hour? $75 an hour? $150 an hour? Regardless of the number, you have to stop doing $10- and $20-per-hour tasks! That’s costing your business money!  What tasks are you doing that you could pay someone else to do so you can focus on business growth? Bookkeeping? Maintenance? Cleaning?  Let others in your organization or vendors do such tasks if they can do them better and cheaper than you can.

Transitioning into a CEO role takes time, but once you’ve gotten there, you’ll find that you are no longer prisoner to your business and that, when you’ve created systems, it doesn’t require you each and every day. And you know what? When you can spend that time building, growing and innovating, we bet you’ll fall in love with your business all over again.

Filed under: Business Coaching Tagged: balance, business blog, business coach, business coaching, business coaching advice, business management, business owner, business owner burnout, business owner emotional management, business owner mindset, business owner roles, business systems, delegation, entrepreneur, Growth Coach, leadership, small business, small business leader, small business management, strategic business owner, strategic mindset, work life balance