When you look at most business owners, on the surface they seem to have it all together, but looks can be very deceiving. A lot of them are actually trapped by their jobs and are miserable. They spend so much time on their businesses, their personal lives suffer, they have to constantly work in order to bring in the money. It creates a dynamic where they actually end up resenting the very thing they dedicated their lives to.
This is especially true for solopreneurs or people who run very lean startups. A lot of these people create businesses based on their own personalities, their own unique skills and abilities. While this brings in a lot of business for them, and works well for them in the beginning, as the business grows, it starts to eat into their quality of life.
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How to Know You’re Trapped By Your Business
- If you’re not doing work, you don’t make any money.
- You have no work-life balance, the job rules your whole life and is destroying your relationships.
- You have no help in your business, and you’re everything in your business from CEO to admin.
- You’re exhausted but you have to keep going to sustain your business.
So if you feel like you’re chained to your business and there’s no way out, here are some steps you can take to make your life easier.
Focus on High Value Tasks
Many people who run businesses don’t actually have any help. They have no virtual assistant, no part-time assistant, no one who lightens the load. As a result, they end up spending a lot of time on $10 an hour work, when they could be doing $1000 an hour work. This means you end up entangled in work that isn’t really growing your business. If you want to solve this, make a list of all the tasks you do. Mark the tasks that are the most valuable use of your time and for everything else, hire a virtual assistant, even a part-time one. You can find a reliable one on Upwork or Fiverr without much cost to you.
Invest in Systems
The reason most business owners fail to find any freedom in their business is that they lack systems. Everything they do isn’t predictable and repeatable, so any time they start working with someone new, it’s like starting from scratch. This will completely deplete your creative energy and make it hard for you to produce a consistent work product. To solve this, you have to start building systems. Start documenting the steps of everything you do from start to finish and refine it. Use that system over and over again until it’s your patented way of running the business. Systems allow you to scale yourself out of the work, hire a staff and keep your service consistent. Investing in such tools allows you to multiply your impact and effectiveness without increasing your working hours.
Automation
Technology is there to make your business more efficient, so use it. Find ways to automate the processes in your business so you can start saving yourself time. If you post on one social media platform, automate the process of posting it to other sites without you having to do it. If you handle a lot of contracts and manage them manually, invest in contract management software so you cut the amount of time you spend on those tasks. You would be surprised at how many hours you save by just making those tweaks and changes.
Choose Whole Life Success
Success isn’t just achieving in business, it’s also about your health, relationships and mental state. Try to make sure all the other parts of your life are getting attention. Schedule time off, and value your family time. When you’re at home be present there and don’t make your loved ones feel like they are competing with the job. When you realize that true success is about every aspect of your life, and not just business, you will shift your priorities accordingly.
As an entrepreneur, you got into this business for freedom, for you to be able to design the life you want. But when you have absolutely no time for anything else and the job is frustrating you, that’s a far cry from freedom. Ultimately, you’re the only person with control over this and you can make a change to your life. Ultimately, you have to be willing to make some changes to how you’re living now, so you can live better in your near future.
About Carson Derrow
