Most business owners are just trying to survive.
They are wearing too many hats, don’t know how to delegate which leads to long hours and burnout.
One study mentions almost 3/4 of small business owners work more than 40 hours a week and almost a quarter more than 60 hours a week.
This isn’t sustainable.
It puts on necessary stress on your relationships, friends and family.
It takes a toll on your health. You eat like shit because it’s convenient.
Don’t workout because you don’t have time.
You’re always stressed, which isn’t good for the most important muscle in your body.
Can’t fall asleep at night because you are worried about all of the fires you have to put out.
Wake up and repeat.
Do you see how this vicious cycle can be hard to break out of?
Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be this way.
You don’t have to control every aspect of your business. In fact, you can’t.
You have to want it. You know what you are supposed to do, why aren’t you doing it?
Change is hard.
I’ve found people who take action get rewarded the most. Just do something.
Something to take a step in the right direction. Take one small step every day or every week.
Where will you be a few months from now? A year?
But you already know that, people are quick to tell you what to do.
I’m going to tell you How To Build a Business that RUNS & GROWS Without You.
The Evolution Loop
Undoubtedly you’ve heard many different quotes that all say the same thing. If you aren’t moving forward you are dying.
Change is inevitable. You must change to continue growing.
Commit to Lifelong Learning
Knowledge is the father of power.
The first step of the Evolution Loop is to commit to lifelong learning.
There is so much information available today in whatever form you prefer to consume information.
Books, podcasts, blogs, YouTube.
There is no excuse for not being able to figure out something you need help with.
15 years ago when I came back to help grow my family’s business, I quickly realized we knew nothing of marketing.
No way to consistently bring in new customers.
No way to communicate with our customers after they left the building.
So I started reading.
About a half dozen books.
Each book I read referenced another book, so my to-do list was never-ending.
Eventually, I noticed common threads and started implementing ideas that fit our model.
Over the next two years we grew our customer database to over 10k people.
Once we had that list, we grew 10-15% per for the next 6 years.
That never would have happened without the knowledge in those first few books I consumed.
Extract One Actionable Idea
If you are like me, every time you walk in your business you see things you want to fix.
Your to-do list probably has one thousand items on it.
Where do you start?
It can be a daunting task that will overwhelm you if you let it. Pick one thing at a time.
You must PRIORITIZE. What is the one thing that will have the biggest impact on your operation?
Once this is identified, you’ll need to find some resources (books, YouTube, podcasts) with your new commitment to lifelong learning.
Sometimes you’ll read a book and take 5 things away that you want to implement.
I’ve found trying to do too much at one time often leads to nothing changing.
You can always find at least one idea in a book to implement. And this makes it easier to implement.
When you go to implement it will almost never go as planned…but that’s ok.
You are still making progress.
You will need the feedback from your staff and customers to refine the process.
Implement One Change Per Month
Commit to turning this into a process.
Dedicate at least 1 hour a day to work on this, if you have the time, commit a whole day where this is all you work on.
The first week of the month read a book, watch some YouTube videos and listen to some podcasts that talk about the thing you want to change. Take notes.
The second week pick ONE thing from your resources to implement in your business.
This should be something that will have a high impact somewhere in your business. You will know it when you see it.
It should make you think “damn, I wish I did this years ago”.
Start writing how you imagine it going, be as detailed as possible. Even try to visualize it in your mind.
Ask yourself, who will be responsible, how they will take care of it. Put as much detail as you can but don’t worry about it being perfect.
The map is not the territory. – Alfred Korzybski
I say don’t worry about it being perfect because someone can tell you how to do something, but you still have to go do it.
You still have to make mistakes and learn the little nuances on your own.
In the third week, it’s time to roll out the plan to the team.
Present your ideas and instructions to the team. Let them know you need help refining the process.
I’ve found it’s easier for new processes to stick if the team feels like they are part of the process rather than being told what to do.
Take the week to discuss and answer questions while also picking a start date during the 4th week of the month.
When the start date arrives, just do it!
Let the team make mistakes.
Let them struggle. Let them develop.
If you always bail them out, they will continue to expect it.
Will they perform this task as well as you could? Hopefully they do it better.
But if not it’s ok, it’s still one thing that is improving your business that you don’t have to do.
Reflect and Adjust
Over the next 30 days or so be sure to keep an eye on things, and adjust the process as needed as you learn how it works in your business.
You’ll want to meet with your staff at regular intervals to discuss how the new process is integrating into the business.
Here’s where you can use real feedback from customers or other employees to adjust and refine this process to best serve your business.
They say it takes 66 days to form a habit. Meeting regularly will keep your staff engaged and help the new process become more sticky.
After the first month or so you can start spacing out the intervals at which you meet, assuming things are moving forward.
The most important factor to help you successfully implement change in your business is company-wide commitment.
You need to clearly communicate with your staff your goals and ask them to be a part of your journey.
It’s lonely at the top but you can’t do it all by yourself.
When your staff knows why you want to make certain changes, it will increase the chances they want to help vs just feel like it’s one more thing their boss is asking them to do.
Repeat
As you probably noticed, I’m suggesting you implement one change a month.
But the process could take 2-3 months.
This means as your first project starts implementation, you should start consuming content tackling the next issue on your list.
As the first project progresses, it will take less of your time. You might feel like you accomplished something by implementing a big change.
But I encourage you not to take your foot off the gas.
Use your new found extra time to work on the next project.
Give a different team member ownership of the task so you can continue implementing change.
You might find yourself with 2-3 projects running simultaneously. I wouldn’t recommend any more than this.
If projects are taking longer than anticipated to finalize, you should still keep consuming content and planning out the next projects so you have a backlog ready to go when you get caught up.
As you implement changes other issues will pop up and move priority around.
For example, when we started figuring out marketing with our restaurants, we had a 5 year period where our catering sales grew 25-30% per year.
Each time we saw a bump in volume it would take us a few months to adjust.
As things slowed down, we would start implementing new techniques again.
This cycle allowed us to grow quickly, while also giving us time to adjust as needed.
Conclusion
Are you trying to survive the day or build your future?
Take control of your business and your time. Invest in yourself so that you can implement one new change a month in your business.
This ensures you are always taking steps forward.
Then whether the economy tanks or you meet someone who wants to invest in your business, you’ll be ready either way.