One of the challenges that business owners are faced with while growing their business is what I call, “Owner Mindset”. How can you tell if this is what you are experiencing? The symptoms that you may be experiencing might be feelings of overwhelm and anxiety about ALL of the day-to-day tasks that you know you need to do in your business. If you are experiencing this and find yourself wondering how other business owners seem to manage multiple staff, multiple locations or multiple countries, I’m here to say, it’s possible for you too. Let’s explore this…
My question to you begins with how are you, as the owner of your business, spending your time? Now, I know, I know: We’ve all heard it before: Manage your time, manage your life. IBut it’s much more complex than a simple need for a day-planner. I’m talking about what specific individual role do you play within the business itself?. Are you spending your time on what makes your business run, or or you spending your time on what moves your business forward?
Let me explain – As a ‘solo’ entrepreneur, you may have started out doing everything yourself. You created your product or service. You learned to market it. You developed a system for distributing it. You dealt with all your customers on all their concerns and issues. You may have even packaged the boxes in the back room, or stitched your own website together! Wherever your humble beginnings began, one thing is for sure: Everything you’ve learned over the years has taught you what works for you and you’ve come to not only believe, but rely on the fact that this personal process of working inside your business, is what you need to do in order to be successful and accomplish the goals you’ve set out. Now, fast forward to the present moment: If something doesn’t work, you step in and fix it. You not only created the business, but also the environment and the process for how work gets done in the business.
What ends up happening, though, is what I call working ‘in’ your business and not ‘on’ your business. And what I’m here to tell you is, the same mindset that got you to this point, is most likely NOT the same mindset that you will need to get ahead and grow the business to the next level of output and results.
The bottom line is this: If you always seem to be working off the side of your desk on important stuff, while managing a million other tiny things, or if you find that you just don’t have enough time in the day to really think & plan, or you find that you have to constantly step in and fix or rescue issues and mistakes as they come up and you’re consistently feeling overwhelmed with this ever-expanding workload – then you’ve got some core problems in your business that need attention. Most likely these problems start with your own personal behavior as the owner – specifically the methods you use to grow your business and where your concentration & prioritization of your personal time is spent working inside the business.
Does any of this ring bells for you? Do you see any red flags for you? Would you like to have a conversation about where you are at and where you go from here?
