Imagine Your Business Separate From You

Whether you started your business from the ground up or purchased an existing business, most owners start with grit and drive. Willing to do it all and sacrifice their personal life in the beginning for the good of their business. Owners tend to think of their business as part of them. Many have told me “It’s my baby, No one cares as much as I do, or I am the business.” This sounds positive to many, but I can assure you this way of thinking over time will hold your business back.

Reality Check

• Reaching Capacity – By being the person who does it all is frustrating when you reach capacity. This can leave you feeling drained when you get home. Having no energy for your personal life. Being pulled between work and home can leave an owner feeling isolated.
• Taking Everything Personally – A negative review, a team member who questions your way of doing something or customers who don’t authorize work can leave you feeling attacked or even defensive. You’ve worked hard to build your business, and most don’t see the effort made.
• Unable To Assess – You can’t look at your business objectively to assess where the business is, where it could go and how to get there. Pride and ego make hearing feedback from others difficult.

Staying Stuck

Many owners can stay stuck in the doing it all trap for years. Even after hiring a team, they may still find themselves shifting to being the go-to person. Not allowing team members to own their role by setting clear expectations and giving them the resources to grow.

This only reinforces the feelings of isolation many owners experience. It also makes the business difficult to have someone else manage or sell in the future.

Business as a Separate Entity Benefits

Growth – The capacity increases when you have a team that gains from business growth, through training, benefits and pay. Your business can become a destination employer providing an environment for team members to develop skills and succeed.

SWOT – Doing an objective analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to your business is a strategy for long-term sustainability. Include your team to stay current and innovative.

Navigate Challenges – Challenges happen in every business, and you can come out stronger on the other side of them. When an owner is willing to learn from past struggles it helps them navigate through new challenges more smoothly.

Imagining your business separate from yourself helps you realize that you can design a business that works for you, your team, customers, and community. It can be profitable, sustainable, and enjoyable. You can be more confident in the business decisions you make because your thinking has shifted.

Seeing your business as a separate entity makes shifting from working less in the business to more on it easier because you focus on the health of the business. Your family and friends will notice the difference. You’ll be present and even more pleasant to be around. You may even discover that life and work can be both fulfilling and rewarding.  Businesses are bought and sold every day and many of them operate long after the previous owner is gone. What do you want to be remembered for? Will it be positive or negative? Remember it’s never too late to start looking at your business differently.

Maryann Croce, a certified partner of Todd Herman’s 90 Day Year™, is a coach/speaker and creator of ‘3-Day Weekends’ System. Her company Small Biz Vantage specialized in performance and leadership for automotive and skilled trade business owners. She has been an auto shop owner since 1999. 

You can reach Maryann at (203) 913-7741 or maryann@SmallBizVantage.com Maryann speaks on strategies to achieve work-life fulfillment SmallBizVantage.com