5

05 Feb 2015

Falling in Love with your Business Again

With the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, it’s the perfect time to look at the relationships in your life and be thankful for the positive influences in your life. If you’re a business owner, that should include examining the relationship between you and your business.

As President of The Growth Coach, I want to ask you some tough, but potentially revealing, questions:

  • As a business owner, could you leave your business today for one or two months and come back to find it operating smoothly and profitably?
  • Could you even escape for two weeks?
  • When was the last time you had a work-free, guilt-free vacation with no work calls, emails or paperwork?
  • If you found yourself seriously ill or disabled, would your business survive?
  • When physically away from the business, can you be mentally away from the business?
  • Do you have systems in place that keep you out of every transaction, decision and problem? Or does every aspect of the business depend on you?

If you answered “no” to most of these questions, odds are that you’re a prisoner to your business. That’s not how it should be! You opened a business to OWN a business – not to RUN a business. You should have a business and not just a stressful, 80-hours-per-week job. Your business should serve you and your dreams, not keep you from them, and it all starts with having effective business systems in place!

Bottom line, you should run your business. It should not run you, your family or your life. Your business should work harder so you don’t have to. It should be systems-dependent and not owner-dependent or even expert-dependent for its success. Your systems should be consistently directing your employees on what to do and how to do it. Your business should have its own heart, mind, and soul – it shouldn’t steal yours!

Stop for a moment and think of the consequences. If everything in your business flows through you and is dependent upon you, then you are dramatically restricting the growth and profits of your company. As a single person, there are natural limits to the amount of work, transactions, problems and decisions you can manage in a given day. By being involved in every aspect, you will continue to restrict the development of your employees and business and ensure your persistent exhaustion. Stop missing out on greater personal freedom, money and happiness. You need to step back and manage the business instead of run the business!

Here are some resources to help you stop feeling like a prisoner to your business:

– Nathan Owens, President of The Growth Coach

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *