Repent Ye’ Business Owner!

Let's face it, the business you created to give you freedom is doing the opposite.

• You can’t go on holiday without your laptop
• Your family are strangers
• You wake up at 3 am
• You feel guilty for neglecting your family
• You feel overwhelmed and stressed
• You don't have time for your health and hobbies
• You keep hoping that it’s going to get easier
• Your task list gets longer
• You want to prove the naysayers wrong
  

Being a business owner means carrying double-edged guilt. Taking time off makes you feel you are neglecting your family and friends, and when you're relaxing, you feel guilty for ignoring your business.

Business owners are trapped because they fail to remove themselves from their complex business processes.

I've been through the same thing. I was trapped between my medical career and a growing property portfolio. I had no time. My family came first, so I systematically escaped the prison of my own making.

For me to lead multiple businesses, run ultra marathons, and have the time and freedom to spend with my loved ones requires highly systemised business processes.

Having learnt how to do this, I now share my insights and learnings with business owners and companies. I help my clients break free from the entrepreneurial trap that inevitably negatively affects their life, relationships and health.

Let me tell you about a client of mine.

Georges Verdes runs a high-end London estate agency and suffered from this same problem. Wihtin 8 months of working with me, he took off 18 consecutive days without checking in on his team. In year two, he took off 32 days. He connected with his kids and family and had headspace and time for himself. (You can listen to my podcast with Georges here.

Here are some steps I suggest to help clients like Georges escape the business owner's guilt trap.

Learn to let go

Stepping back is difficult, but the reward can be significant. Stop being a micro-manager and trust your systems and your people. A well-run business is a business that doesn't have you driving every aspect of the detail.

You need to invest in systems that will drastically reduce the time required to train staff to collaborate effectively on complex, multi-step, multi-person and multi-app processes.

With these processes in place, your constant input is unnecessary, and the business still drives forward.

Systems enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things consistently.

Having great systems will significantly reduce the time taken to manage complex processes. With your processes mapped, aligned with proper task management, you can free up key staff members to focus on their highest-value tasks.

The five most vital apps your business needs

To get more time, you need apps that will assist you with these five areas:

• Video sharing
• Cloud storage
• Task management
• Login and password sharing, and
• Process mapping

Having these apps in your arsenal will make managing your business much more straightforward. I work with my clients to see what will suit your business (and your pocket) best.

The importance of documentation

This is what a business owner client of mine had to say recently: "Some of my processes are documented, but I am reliant on my staff's knowledge to get the work done. If a key staff member left tomorrow, it would be a disaster."

You need to document your entire system from end to end so that tasks can be delegated without needing consistent management.

While this may sound like a considerable amount of work, the benefit is enormous, especially when training new staff. Making sure they get up to speed as quickly as possible will save you both time and money. The key to making this work is to have a system for creating systems.

Don’t rely on good people; good people will leave

Business owners who work with me get access to systems for recruitment, onboarding, training and management of remote (virtual) and local staff.

Proper systems empower you to hire people who will be a good fit for your company, assist you in managing them more effectively, and ensure your people love working with you.

But even good people leave, so ensure you have the systems to replace key employees as efficiently as possible. And make sure you have the systems in place for their replacement to hit the ground running.

But good people leave, so ensure you have the systems to replace a key employee with the right person as efficiently as possible.

And make sure you have the plans in place for their replacement to hit the ground running.

As a business owner, you need total visibility of everything happening in your business, so you have the confidence to know who is doing what and if it's being done to a satisfactory standard. This way, you can step back and stress less.