Against all the opposition and advice from friends and family, you start a business. You don’t have a choice though, the thought of working for someone else and building their success makes you want to throw up. Overtime your hard work leads to your business taking off and growing faster than you ever thought possible. So now it’s no longer a question of whether the business will survive but how you will manage all the work, both for you and your clients. Then you hit a wall, it’s too much. Managing staff, sending invoices, client projects, meeting deadlines – the beautiful paradise of running your own business is sucking the life out of you, so what do you do?
Get Back to the Basics
Being overwhelmed and lost in the day to day of your business is something that many entrepreneurs have to deal with. A simple and easy to implement approach to this issue is planning the future of your business and setting some goals. When most people start a business they set some financial benchmarks but don’t really look beyond these targets. When you take the time to set goals for your business it can help you to focus on the future when you feel lost in the detail. These are a few of my favourite goals that I work towards:
Freedom
The ability to do, say, manage or achieve whatever you want whenever you want it. The option that everything you do within your business is the way you want it to be. That’s certainly not something you have when you work for someone else and is what your own business gives you in abundance. Having this goal can give you a boost when you feel like your business is taking too much from you.
Delegation
Only doing the things in your business you enjoy and have your team do all the things that drain you, or make you want to run for the hills. Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t just come from having too much to do, it also comes from completing tasks that you aren’t confident in doing or that you simply dislike. When you make delegation a goal it allows you to stay on top of the business output that energize you.
Giving
Your goals don’t have to be related to your business directly. Perhaps there is a significant charity you’re passionate about and would love to donate to in a big way in the coming years. That could be a goal that keeps you motivated by focusing on something bigger than yourself and by attaching your businesses success and output on helping someone other than yourself. Let that drive you in times of pressure and stress.
The bottom line is that running any business is hard. There will be days where it’ll take everything you have to keep the doors open. You will always face challenges, whether you’re managing others, the company or your clients. It’s easy to get lost in the chaos and forget why you started out on this crazy journey in the first place. In those times, it’s important to remember what your business goals are so that you do not feel like you have become a rabbit in a trap with no way out.
Listen to my entire conversation with Sophie Andrews on Isolation, Building a Successful Team and the Exciting World of Accounting here.
http://www.bond-appetit.com/sophie-andrews/
Author: Ronsley Vaz
Ronsley is the founder & chief day dreamer at AMPLIFY. He is an author, speaker & serial entrepreneur.
He has a Masters’ degree in Software Engineering and an MBA in Psychology and Leadership. He is known as the creator of We Are Podcast – the first Podcasting Conference in the Southern Hemisphere, and the host of The Bond Appetit Podcast and Should I Start a Podcast. He has an audience of over 3 million in 133 countries.