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Being an involved owner of a business can be tricky. You want to make sure that everything is running smoothly, but at the same time you need to maintain some distance. Your job as the owner is not to manage the company, nor are you obligated to take part in every aspect of it.
As someone who owns a business, your responsibilities go beyond just paying bills and making sure employees don’t eat all of the cheese puffs. You have the ultimate power to keep or lose money for the company, and with that comes pressure.
You must understand that being a hands off business owner isn’t always easy. It takes a lot of self-control to stay out of the picture when other people could use your help. Plus, there will be times when things really do look like they’ll go well on their own without your input, so it's important to prepare yourself for those moments.
When you're ready, here are some tips to help you become a more detached boss.
As a business owner, your job does not end when you close for the day or night. You have an obligation to manage your company until it no longer needs your help.
That means staying in contact with customers, responding to messages and emails, checking stock levels, and monitoring competitors’ moves- all things that take away from your personal time.
As much as you want to run every aspect of your business yourself, this is simply not possible. There will be times when you need to step back and let someone else do the work for you.
This could be due to lack of experience, poor performance, or limited resources and manpower. It may also be because there are too many projects going on at once and you can’t focus on any one thing completely.
Whatever the reason, know when it's appropriate to hire someone and how to be a hands off business owner.
As a business owner, your time is very valuable. You have limited resources and equipment that can be used for marketing or promoting your services, so you cannot afford to waste it- especially yours!
If someone in your organization does not seem to be performing their duties, get rid of all distractions and let them get the work done.
It may mean waiting until later to do something or asking someone else to take over so you can focus on other things. It might also mean letting go and trusting they will handle the situation properly.
As a leader, you must assume responsibility for the success or failure of others. Sometimes this means letting people fail so that they learn from it and don’t give up. Or it could mean helping them succeed beyond what you would like to see yourself.
Whatever the case may be, remember that you are only there to help them and push them when necessary. Don’t worry about whether they will make enough effort or if they deserve more chances, just keep showing up and supporting them.
They’ll figure out how to win without you, but if they don’t, at least you tried everything you could.
As business owners, we often get in our own way when it comes to running our companies. We become so focused on making sure everything is done “right” that we forget about what makes us as people connected with other people.
Running a company includes dealing with all sorts of people- customers, vendors, employees, shareholders, etc. If you are too involved at every level, then there won’t be anyone around to do any work!
As a business owner, you need to make room for yourself outside of work. You need to devote time to friends, family, hobbies and even self-care activities.
If you don’t, things will eventually fall apart. You'll lose focus on who you are as a person and what matters to you. At that point, you'll have wasted your life.
Your colleagues and coworkers will also notice a change in you. They'll see someone who doesn't seem quite themselves. Or they may start talking about how you're not quite yourself these days.
As a business owner, you must believe in yourself and your product or service enough to go out into the world and promote it. You have to convey that you are confident in what you offer and want others to know about it!
If you don’t like something you do not like talking about it, then why would anyone else feel comfortable doing so? By being directly involved in the success of your company, you have an obligation to help spread its message and grow its audience.
Your job as a business owner is to assume responsibility for the success of your organization. This means making sure everyone around you is also assuming their share of responsibility. It means staying focused on taking action and promoting your products and services, instead of giving up and waiting for things to happen.
You can’t control everything, but you can control your actions, and when you work with people who agree with you and support you, your chances of success increase.
As a business owner, your job can sometimes feel like a never-ending battle with your colleagues, customers, and even yourself. You spend hours in meetings, exchanging messages and talking about projects, only for nothing to come of it.
You send an email asking someone to do their work and get no response, so you have to re-do that task yourself. Or you put in lots of effort planning a project and then nobody else does anything.
At times, you may feel like you are doing everything right, but your company just doesn’t seem to be moving forward. There can be a lot of stress involved in being a leader – not what people would expect from you, I know!
It’s easy to become very frustrated when you invest time into something and don’t see results. This feeling gets worse if you keep having to repeat things because others aren’t taking care of their jobs.
But instead of getting more stressed out, why not try looking at this as an opportunity?
I’m referring to the reason why you feel overwhelmed by all the tasks that need to be done — this is your chance to stop being a manager and start being a leader. Being a leader means creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable performing his or her duties. It also means giving other people responsibility so they will feel motivated to do their part.
‘Never getting too comfy’ is an excellent way to motivate yourself to do something you have been putting off for a while. It is similar to what my friend like to say, ‘If you are not going to do it now, then when will you?’
By setting your goal as something that you want to achieve soon, you increase its importance in your daily life and subconsciously make it more likely to be done.
The easier you make it to give up on your goal, the less motivation you will have to actually accomplish it.
So try being more conscious of how much time you spend on your goals and work towards spending less time on them. If you notice that you are becoming uncomfortable or tired, take a break!
You can always come back later and focus on your goal with more energy.
When things are going badly, staying positive can be difficult. You may feel like giving up or throwing in the towel, but don’t!
Thinking about all of your failures is certainly depressing, but it's also helpful in helping you learn from them.
By thinking about how things have gone wrong before, you can figure out what didn't work and why.
With that knowledge, you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future by changing what you're doing.
And while some setbacks will always make you unhappy for a little while, I'll bet you'll be happier at the end of the day than if you gave up and quit.
As business owners, we as leaders of our companies need to learn how to be hands off. This is very difficult for some people.
They want to do everything themselves – they feel that if they don’t control every aspect of their company, then what use is being an owner?
As hard as it may be sometimes, you have to let go and trust others in your organization to get the job done. You can still keep up-to-date on what goes on, but you must also rely on others to take care of the rest.
This is why leadership is so important – the leader who is always involved becomes too focused on his or her position instead of helping those under them achieve theirs.
By having other successful leaders working under you, they will help carry out missions that you have set aside time to leave behind.
If you constantly put yourself into situations where you cannot afford to fail, the chances of success are greatly reduced. You will not provide the right environment for those coming after you, and there will be no one to assume responsibility when things go wrong.
