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Business Coaching for Success

Are you one of those business owners who is afraid to take time off in case your team think you are slacking or not pulling your weight? If you are, you should consider very carefully why it is you are doing what you do, and also have you got the right people working for you?

I come across this attitude a lot when I start working with new clients. This feeling of guilt that takes them over when they take any time off, let alone a holiday. I can understand why people feel like this, but let me put it another way, and perhaps it will help you to move to the next level.

The thing is, the majority of business owners set up their business because they wanted to have a lifestyle which allowed them lots of money, and lots of time (leisure time) to enjoy it. So why is it, once this starts to become a reality, do people shy away from it? Of course no-one likes to be seen as a free-loader taking advantage of others, but what you must remember is that you have already spent years of hard work getting it to a place where you don’t have to be constantly there. Furthermore, you have almost certainly taken risks in setting up the business initially, you may well have invested time and money in yourself to learn new skills, and indeed how to run a business, and you will almost certainly have invested a considerable amount of your own money getting things off the ground.

So essentially you have taken all the risks, you carry all the burden of responsibility for your team, and you take on huge amounts of stress keeping the business going, and ensuring it remains profitable and going forward.

For your staff you have created, a safe environment and a secure job, which pays them well enough to look after them and their families – so how can they say you don’t deserve a break, and ultimately a chance to sit back and let others do the work.

So if you need someone to help you make that happen, give me a call, because I know you have earned it.

Something I haven’t blogged about for some time is business structure, and the value it has in so many ways. People who run small businesses with less than 5 employees, and in particular businesses which involve family members, often can’t see the reason for writing down an organisational structure, after all “everyone knows what they should be doing,” or “everyone mucks in together.” However, this a sure recipe for disaster in the longer run, because no-one is really responsible for any one thing, and the chances of things being missed or duplicated becomes greater and greater as the business grows.

Sometimes business owners say they don’t want to write down a structure, particularly when it comes to including their family members, as they feel it formalises things too much, and may cause conflict. I believe the exact opposite is true, because in fact the clearer everyone is about what is expected of them, the less likely it is that confrontation will occur. The other advantage of specifying the roles and responsibilities is that everyone should know how they should be spending their time. This can be particularly useful where family members work in the business, part time or full time, for without clarity of their responsibilities they are constantly asking the business owner what to do next. In other words the business owner then finds that they are almost having to find things for their employee to do, and worse still, often have to explain how to do it, and then check regularly it is being done correctly. In fact it ends up in the business owner effectively doing the other person’s job, and not being able to concentrate on their own key tasks.

So if you are wondering how to keep employees busy without constant supervision, write down your structure, allocate responsibilities and ensure that what they have to do is systemised.

Complacency can be a major problem for any business, and I see it creep into many of my clients, in particular once they start to turn things around, and feel the benefits of the coaching.

It can happen to anyone, and recently I have even been guilty of this in my business. Things are going well, with a good base of repeat custom, and plenty of promise for the future. However, it only takes a few to say that they don’t want to do anything over the summer, or that they won’t start until later in the year, or not at all, and before you know it, suddenly things are not as rosy as you think. Hence the need to constantly work on lead generation even when you think you have finally cracked it.

I see it time and time again, even with some of my most successful clients. They think they can sit back and wait for the business to simply roll in, and suddenly they are faced with one or two rather thin months, and cash flow is looking dodgy.

Normally we are able to nip the downward trend in the bud, providing we address the marketing strategy as soon as possible. However, occasionally it takes a real crisis to occur to convince them that a radical change and increase in marketing activity is needed to set things in the right direction once more.

We spent a very productive morning addressing all our marketing activity earlier this week, and have subsequently put new plans into action, which will no doubt soon bring in more leads.

So if you are finding things have gone off the boil a bit, why not get someone to help you redress the situation soon, before it becomes too late.

Business Life Ltd

Molens Cottage
Bures Road
White Colne
Colchester
Essex
CO6 2QF

Telephone: 01787 229908
Email: info@yourbusinesslife.co.uk

Company Registered in England and Wales No. 4618907
VAT no. 798 1624 81.

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