work-life-balance

18 Aug 2018

Finding Balance as a Small Business Owner or a Company President

Small business owners and company presidents have a lot in common – starting with how busy they can be. Being in charge of everything has benefits, but it also has major drawbacks, especially when it comes to work life balance. You should be able to work to live, not live to work, no matter how much you love your business or your career. If you’ve spent your whole summer at the office, it’s time for a change.

At The Growth Coach, we work with a lot of clients who are stuck working 7 days a week, who are constantly on call and who have the last word on every business decision. Those clients are often not only struggling to keep both their businesses and their personal lives afloat, but also completely burned out. The business or career they’ve been passionately building for years has taken over their entire lives and, all too often, they can’t even take a vacation without being on call or closing up the shop.

Take on a CEO Mindset: Small business owners and company presidents often have a hard time delegating, which means they are constantly swamped with low-level tasks. A CEO is an ultimate leader – not someone you call with every small problem or question. Having a hard time with that mindset? Try this… what should your hourly wage be as a CEO? $50 an hour? $75 an hour? $150 an hour? If you are doing tasks that someone making $10 to $20 an hour could do, you are costing your business money! Learn to let go a little so you can delegate those tasks.

Train and Trust Your Managers: If you are going to step back from the day-to-day management of the business, you have to have someone who can fill that role. That means either training a manager to take over or building a management team. Either way, you have to make sure you find the right people, invest the time into training and onboarding, and then trust them to do their jobs. Will there be hiccups along the way? Of course. But if you don’t back off and trust your team, you’ll never be able to let go.

Schedule Time Away: Life moves quickly and, when you are busy, it’s easy to skip vacations, miss soccer games or back out of going to happy hour with your friends. Although work things will always come up, you have to be able to step away from the business and live your life. As the owner or president of a business, you might always need to have your cell phone, but you need to look at your calendar and schedule time for yourself and your family. If you’re not making a more concerted effort to focus on your work life balance, you’ll always find tasks to fill in the cracks.