07: Freeing up your time in the business

As business owners it’s easy to get stuck in the daily grind and it’s hard to envisage being able to remove yourself when so much relies on you. Of course, it’s expected and normal to work hard and put in lots of hours and effort in your business and certain times will require you to do that. However, we noticed that we wrestled with stepping away for years, as we thought it would be too hard to get anyone to replace what we did. We both had the mindset that we needed to do the job ourselves as we were the owners and we knew best. It’s important to think about how you can step away more from the day to day in your business, so you can work on building the business and doing the things you love. When you’re doing everything it’s easy to feel trapped in the business and it becomes all consuming, to the point where you don’t enjoy it, you’re exhausted, and you start to resent it.

What are the resistance thoughts that can come up?

• Paying for a staff member, especially public holiday rates
• Thinking you’re the only ones who can do the job well
• As the owners it’s your responsibility to know and do everything
• You’re too busy
• Fear of losing control
• You’ll lose money

What pushed us through the resistance and make change?

It’s often in life the hard things that force us to change and think deeper about what truly matters. For us a few things happened that forced us to think outside of the box and think about how we could remove ourselves more from the day to day in the business.  These were, feelings of burn out and Sarah’s diagnosis of Hashimotos, losing a close friend to cancer and moving to the coast, over an hour drive away from the office, instead of a 5 minute walk.

How did we do it?

• Mindset shift! We looked at all the blockages that were stopping us from stepping away, such as money, time, fear & control.
• We had a meeting to talk about the things we were good at and added value in the business and the jobs we dreaded.
• We talked about what things we wanted to do outside of the business that we loved and added value, meaning and a sense of wellbeing.
• We calculated the cost of extra staff, and then worked out where we can add value and spend time building the business to increase sales to pay for extra staff.
• Invested and implemented new systems and processes in the form of apps, new technology, job descriptions and staff training.

What are the benefits?

• Amazingly you are more productive!
• Your business will thrive!
• Helps you to implement better systems to manage the day to day
• You get to focus on the things that help grow the business
• You get to have more time together and with the family
• Better sense of well being
• And so much more!

What can you do?

Start with the conversation about what jobs you both do in the business and what you enjoy and dread. Think about what lights you up and where you’d like to learn more and upskill that will improve your business and life.

It can be scary to step back, however when you do it, you wonder why you haven’t done it sooner!