Do you enjoy running your business? Four steps to ensure you do
Everyone has different reasons for starting or buying their own business. For me, the primary driver was getting to use my passion to help more than one small business owner at a time experience success. There are thousands of reasons people make the leap into business ownership, but that may not end up being what you enjoy most about the work of your business. After some time has passed, the excitement and enjoyment of taking the leap can be replaced by the exhaustion of trying to make it successful.
We work a lot. For most of us, more of our waking hours are spent working than on anything else. We should derive enjoyment from the experience. Known as “work satisfiers,” these are the elements of your day-to-day job that bring you satisfaction or joy. They can include things like developing a team, doing a detailed analysis of financials, public speaking, closing a deal or meeting face to face with customers. Satisfiers are present (or lacking) in all jobs regardless of whether you own the company. When your satisfiers are not present, your enjoyment of work goes down, and your likelihood of burnout goes up. Work satisfiers revolve around what you enjoy about your work product, environment and interactions, and the act of owning a business may not be what brings you enjoyment.
As the day-to-day of running a business takes control, many business owners ignore the need for satisfaction. The assumption seems to be that owning and running your own entity is the satisfying part. If operational activities, stressing over bringing in enough revenue to make payroll and meeting product delivery deadlines do not bring you joy, then your needs may not be met. It is important to identify what will provide you enjoyment in your day-to-day work. Once you know what you need, it is critical to maintain that in your role.
It can feel overwhelming to consider how to make your work more enjoyable. Here are four steps to move toward a more satisfying experience as a business owner.
1. Identify what you enjoy and what you do not enjoy
Spend time thinking through previous roles or projects and your current role. What did you enjoy? What did you distinctly dislike? Write the lists down. Create columns for likes and dislikes, and write down whatever comes to your mind as you think back over your working years.
2. Evaluate the status of your satisfiers
Review your list, and indicate whether each item is present in the course of your current role. For the items marked as not present on your list of likes, circle those that could be added to your daily activities. On your dislikes list, determine if those items present in your role could be delegated.
3. Prioritize changes to be made
At this point, you may choose to transfer your lists to a fresh document. Make a separate list of the items present in your daily role that you enjoy. Simply being reminded of those items may be enough to keep you motivated. The next list to prioritize is the items on the likes list that you thought could be added to your role. Rank the list to determine which items would give you the greatest level of satisfaction if returned to your daily activities. The final review is to rank the list of disliked items that you marked as possible to delegate.
4. Determine steps to generate more satisfaction with your day
Starting with the highest-ranked items on your lists, write down what it would take to incorporate more satisfiers into your day and to delegate your least enjoyable activities. Some of these could happen instantly. If you really enjoy team interaction and collaboration, get more team meetings on your calendar to work on projects. Other items will take more time and potentially cost more. If you really hate the tedious task of entering transactions in your bookkeeping system, set a target to outsource that activity in the next three to six months. Simply having a goal to alleviate you of the items you do not enjoy should create more satisfaction.
It is important to remember that not all unenjoyable tasks can be removed. As the business owner, you will still be responsible for reviewing the books, even with a bookkeeping service’s help, and you will still need to hire and fire team members (as much as you do not enjoy it). The key is to always ensure there are enough components of your role that will keep you satisfied and enjoying the daily grind.
Having knowledge of why you may not be enjoying your day-to-day work and taking steps to change that may be the boost you need. As you get closer to achieving your desired changes and crafting your role in a way that best suits your skills and needs, you may once again feel like owning your own business is the best job in the world.
**Originally published on Puget Sound Business Journal, October 2020