Don’t let your business growth kill you
From the moment I started my business, I had a vision for where it could go. I could see the potential to support small business owners throughout the country and guide them in ending the daily scramble of running their business. Starting the business, I knew it would be a lot of work and that some weeks would require a lot of hours. I was excited to spend each day using my passion for making small businesses and their owners successful.
The business is growing, faster than I anticipated, and I have weeks of pure elation and others that are exhausting. Regardless of how the week goes, I know what I am working towards and the impact I am having with my business.
What I also know is the impact I do not want my business to have on me. I do not want Elevation Business Consulting to be the death of me.
Owning a business should not end life as you know it. You still need to live outside of the business while running the entity. Owning a business should not be detrimental to your enjoyment of life or your health.
With each new phase of growth, it is important to evaluate what needs to change to make the new level of business and activity sustainable and scalable for future growth. It is not always easy to sit back and identify those areas ripe for streamlining or outsourcing, but it needs to be done.
Not sure how to create a plan to shift your life from being all business to also having a life? Try these four steps:
Look at everything on your plate. Literally write out how you are spending your time. (You can get a step by step for how to analyze your chaos here). Once you have an evaluation of how you are spending your time, you can determine what needs to stay on your plate, what needs to move to another person’s plate, and what takes more time than it should because of inefficiencies or lack of solid process.
Review your core processes and find segments to streamline. There may also be steps that are no longer relevant based on how the business has grown. Create a plan to refresh your processes to meet your current needs.
Confirm you have a vacation scheduled within the next twelve months. If you do not, block out a week to take a true vacation and pick a destination that gets you excited. Use this as your motivation to get your operations humming and activities removed from your plate.
Spend time each week making changes to how your business operates and how your team functions to get activities off your plate and strengthen your core processes.
Running a business can be fulfilling but only if you achieve success in a personally sustainable way. While scheduling and taking a vacation does not solve the challenge of your business becoming your life, it is a good barometer for how much work needs to be done to move you to a healthier place. Building and developing your team, structures, and processes to allow you to enjoy your life and stay healthy will ensure you can make the impact through your business you have always envisioned.
photo credit: Sabine Burns https://www.sabineburns.com/