It is great being an entrepreneur and business owner. But maybe not so great if your business demands your constant daily attention to detail and you realize you have bought yourself a job.
The best business people take control of their lives, and never become victims of their businesses. Any profitable business can be arranged to complement the style of its owner, by placing the right people in the right places and applying the art of appropriate delegation.
People start their own businesses not only to achieve, contribute and profit, but also to give them personal freedom. When you own the place there is no one to tell you that you have to be there at 7:30AM or that you can’t take Friday off. There is no one to tell you that you have to work on details of the businesses when what you really want to do is develop new business. No one, that is, but yourself. That, and the consequences of the decision you have made, or not made.
We ask our clients, “What did you do today that someone else could have done?”
That leads to the contemplation of three questions:
1. Who has been placed in a position that is not right for them or not yet right for them?
2. Who could be added to take on more duties?
3. When do we start?
We have clients whose owners have worked a six-day week since their business started. By the end of this year we are determined to structure their company so they can make the choice to work five days a week just like their peers do. Imagine that! They are going to get a whole day each week back, which if my calculator is accurate is an extra ten weeks off a year!
We have another client who is very successful at operating their business. But he does so at the cost of not having time to nurture investments in a number of companies and people that have the potential to really take off. We are going to change that.
In both cases we are going through the a process of changing responsibilities, choosing the right people, and raising people up to be great through coaching and responsibility. The outcome is going to be both better results and more happiness. My experience is that good people can handle a little more than you think they can when given a reasonable amount of support and training.
