Your business is growing. So why does it feel like you’re working more than ever?
There’s a funny thing that happens when a small business starts to grow. At first, it’s exciting. More customers. More work. More sales. More money coming in.
You think, “This is brilliant. We’re finally getting somewhere.”
And then, somewhere along the way, you realise you’ve created yourself a job that you can never switch off from. You answer every customer query. You approve every invoice. You chase every payment. You solve every problem. You know where everything is. And if someone asks, “Can you just…?”, somehow the answer is always you.
Sound familiar?
This is one of the biggest problems we see with growing small and medium-sized businesses. The owner has become the engine that keeps everything moving. The problem is, an engine can only run for so long without a service. If every decision has to go through you, every customer needs you and every little problem lands on your desk, growth can actually make life harder rather than easier.
You’ve built a successful business… but you’ve accidentally built one that depends entirely on you. And that’s not really freedom, is it?
“But nobody can do it like me…”
We hear this one a lot and sometimes it’s true, nobody will do it exactly like you. But they don’t need to. Your job as the business owner isn’t necessarily to do everything better than everyone else. It’s to make sure the right things are being done by the right people. That might mean handing over the invoicing. Creating a process for dealing with customer enquiries. Giving someone else responsibility for ordering stock. Automating some of the admin. Or simply stopping yourself from being the person everyone asks before they make a decision.
Start with your diary! Not your bank account
If you want to know whether your business is really working for you, take a good look at where your time is going. For one week, keep track of what you actually do. How much time are you spending on things that make money, improve the business or require your expertise? And how much time are you spending on things that somebody else could do? You might be surprised. Because sometimes the biggest opportunity to increase profit isn’t finding another ten customers. It’s giving the owner back ten hours a week.
Growth shouldn't mean more hours
A growing business should ideally become more efficient, not simply become a bigger machine that demands more of your time. Before you take on more work, ask yourself:
“If we doubled the number of customers tomorrow, could we actually cope?”
If the answer is no, you might not have a sales problem. You might have a systems, people or delegation problem. And that is something you can fix.
Your business should work for you!
Being a business owner doesn’t mean you have to be the person who does everything. Sometimes you need someone outside the day-to-day to look at the business with you and ask the questions you’re too busy to ask yourself or you can see because its too foggy…
Where is your time going? What is actually making you money? What could somebody else be doing? What needs a system? And, perhaps most importantly…
Are you building a business, or have you simply built yourself a very demanding job?
Because growing your business is great. Growing your workload isn’t the goal.
Need advice?
If you’re ever unsure, we’re always happy to help. Sometimes a five-minute conversation can help you understand better.
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