Sometimes we’re so busy running our businesses that we forget what we wanted from them in the first place.

Why do people decide to start their own businesses. For some, it’s about earning more money, for others, it’s about having more freedom, spending time with their family or simply not having a boss telling them what to do.

Some people have a passion for something and decide to turn it into a business, others have spent years working for somebody else and reach the point where they think, “I could do this myself.”

Whatever the reason, most of us start with an idea of what we’d like our lives to look like. I wonder how many business owners ever stop to ask themselves whether the business they’ve built is actually giving them what they wanted. Because sometimes the business you end up running looks very different from the one you originally imagined. You get busy. New customers come along. You take on employees, deal with problems, introduce new services and spend an awful lot of time making decisions.

Before you know it, your working day is filled with things that need doing, rather than the things you actually wanted to spend your time doing, and sometimes, without even realising it, you find yourself running a business that has taken over your life.

I think this is particularly relevant to small business owners.

Imagine somebody who starts a plumbing business because they love their trade and want to earn a better living. A few years later, they’ve got five employees, several vans, a busy diary and a constant stream of telephone calls. They’re spending more time dealing with staffing problems, paperwork and customer complaints than actually doing the work they enjoy.

On paper, the business is doing well.

But are they happy?

Perhaps they are. Perhaps building a team and managing a growing business is exactly what they wanted. But perhaps they miss being on the tools, finishing at a reasonable time and not having to worry about everybody else’s problems.

Neither answer is wrong.

And that’s something I think we sometimes forget when talking about business success. We’re often encouraged to grow. Increase turnover, employ more people, expand into new areas and keep pushing for the next milestone. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. I think having something to work towards is important. However, I don’t believe every business needs to become bigger to become better.

For one person, success might mean employing twenty people and building a company worth millions.

For somebody else, it might mean earning a comfortable living, having Fridays off and being able to collect their children from school.

Surely both can be successful businesses if they’re giving their owners the lives they want?

One thing I’ve noticed when talking with business owners is that we don’t always give ourselves enough time to think about these things. We’re very good at discussing what’s happening this week. The customer who hasn’t paid, the employee who’s leaving, the next VAT return or whether there’s enough work coming in.

But when was the last time you sat down and thought about where you actually want to be in three years? Not just how much turnover you want to achieve. I mean what you want your working week to look like, how much responsibility you want, whether you want employees and what you’d like to be doing with your time.

These are the sorts of conversations I enjoy having when mentoring business owners.

Quite often, somebody will start by talking about a problem in their business, as we talk, the conversation moves towards what they’re actually trying to achieve. Sometimes they realise they’re working towards something they don’t particularly want any more. Other times, they know exactly what they want but haven’t worked out how to get there. Having someone to talk things through with can help. It’s not necessarily about somebody telling you what to do. Sometimes it’s simply about having an hour away from the day-to-day pressures to think properly, answer a few difficult questions and be honest with yourself.

And I think being honest with yourself is important, as your ambitions can change. What you wanted when you started your business at thirty might be very different from what you want at forty-five or fifty. Your family circumstances might change. Your interests might change. You might discover that you enjoy managing people, or realise that you really don’t!

There’s nothing wrong with changing direction.

In fact, I think one of the biggest mistakes a business owner can make is continuing down a particular path simply because that’s the direction they’ve always been heading. It’s easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing. You see another business expanding, opening new premises or employing more people, and suddenly you feel that you should be doing the same Their ambitions aren’t necessarily yours, and their idea of success might be completely different from yours.

Sometimes the best decision isn’t to take on another employee, chase another big contract or work another ten hours a week. Sometimes it’s to simplify things, become more profitable with fewer customers or create a business that doesn’t rely on you being available every minute of the day.

That doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ambition.

It might simply mean you’ve become clearer about what matters to you.

So perhaps it’s worth asking yourself a question.

If you could start your business again tomorrow, knowing everything you know now, would you build exactly the same business?

Would you work the same hours? Offer the same services? Take on the same responsibilities? Employ the same number of people? Or would you do a few things differently? I suspect most of us would change something, and the good news is that you don’t necessarily have to start again to make those changes.

Sometimes you just need to remind yourself why you started in the first place.

Glenn’s Notebook – Business, life and everything in between.