I Don’t Want My Business to Need Me for Everything

Why learning to let go could be one of the most important things we do as business owners.

There’s something I regularly talk about with the business owners I coach and mentor, and it’s something I’m still working on myself.
I don’t want my business to need me for everything.

Now, before any of my clients start wondering whether I’m planning to disappear into the sunset, let me explain!

I have absolutely no intention of stepping away from my clients. Quite the opposite. I want to spend more time with them, understanding their businesses, helping them make decisions and supporting them with the challenges they face.

But to do that, I need to spend less time managing the day-to-day running of my own business.

And, as many business owners will appreciate, that’s sometimes easier said than done.

The problem with wearing too many hats

When you start a business, you generally do everything yourself.

You’re the accountant, administrator, marketing department, IT support, customer service team and probably the person who makes the tea.

In those early days, you don’t necessarily have much choice. There simply isn’t the money or the workload to justify employing people to take some of those responsibilities away.

But as your business grows, something interesting happens.

You employ people, invest in software and develop systems to make life easier. Yet somehow, you still find yourself involved in almost everything.

Every question comes to you. Every problem needs your attention. Every decision seems to require your approval. Before you know it, you’ve created a business where you’re the busiest person in the building.

And I’m speaking from experience here!

Being busy doesn’t necessarily mean being productive

Sometimes the biggest challenge isn’t finding more hours in the day. It’s deciding what we should actually be spending those hours doing.

One thing I’ve learned is that being busy and being productive are two very different things. It’s surprisingly easy to spend an entire day answering emails, dealing with administrative tasks and resolving problems, only to reach the end of it wondering what you’ve actually achieved.

Of course, those things need doing. But do they all need doing by you?

That’s the question I’ve started asking myself more frequently.

The part of my work I particularly enjoy is sitting down with business owners, getting to understand what they’re trying to achieve and helping them work out how to get there.

That’s where I believe I can make the greatest difference.

Yet every hour I spend dealing with something that could be handled by another member of my team is an hour I’m not spending doing that.

Learning to trust the people around you

Delegation sounds wonderful in theory. In practice, it can be surprisingly difficult.

When you’ve built a business yourself, you naturally have your own way of doing things. You know how you like clients to be looked after, how you want the business to operate and the standards you expect.

Handing over responsibility means accepting that someone else might approach a task differently. And here’s something I’ve had to remind myself: differently doesn’t necessarily mean ‘incorrectly’. Sometimes they might even do it better!

I’ve been fortunate to build a team around me at Swan Saunders, and part of my responsibility as a business owner is to give them the tools, training and confidence to do their jobs without feeling they need to check every little thing with me.

That doesn’t mean abandoning responsibility or leaving people to struggle. It means being available when they genuinely need support while giving them the freedom to take ownership of their work. The more confidence and responsibility my team develops, the more time I have to concentrate on the things that need my personal attention.

Everybody benefits, including our clients.

Taking my own advice

There’s a certain irony in being a business coach and mentor.

You can spend an hour talking to another business owner about the importance of delegation, putting systems in place and working on their business rather than constantly working in it.

Then return to your own office and immediately get involved in something you probably should have delegated!

It’s much easier to recognise these things when you’re looking at somebody else’s business. But I think that’s also what makes my own experience valuable when I’m coaching and mentoring others.

I’m not sitting on the sidelines telling people what they should be doing. I’m running businesses myself, facing many of the same challenges and continually learning how to manage them.

And I certainly haven’t perfected the art of letting go.

What does success actually look like?

A question worth asking yourself… If you took a week away from your business tomorrow, what would happen?

Would everything continue running smoothly, or would you return to a mountain of unanswered questions, unfinished tasks and decisions that nobody felt comfortable making?

More importantly, how much of that work genuinely needed you? I think our answers can tell us quite a lot about the businesses we’re building.

For some business owners, success means growing a company they can eventually sell. For others, it means creating a comfortable income, having more time with their families or simply enjoying what they do without constantly feeling overwhelmed.

For me, it’s about building a business where I can spend more time doing the work I enjoy and where I can offer the greatest value.
I don’t want to remove myself from the relationships I’ve built with my clients. Those relationships are one of the main reasons I enjoy being an accountant and mentor.

I simply want to create more time for them.

And that means continuing to invest in my team, improving our systems and recognising that I don’t have to be involved in every aspect of running the practice.

It’s a work in progress

I’m not suggesting that every business owner should immediately hand over half their responsibilities or employ another three people.
Delegation needs to make commercial sense, and sometimes the reality of running a small business means you have to wear several hats.

But I do think it’s worth regularly looking at how we spend our time and asking whether we’re concentrating on the things that really matter.

It’s something I’ll continue working on in my own businesses, and I’m sure I’ll make a few mistakes along the way.

After all, giving advice and following your own advice are sometimes two very different things!

For me, success isn’t building a business that doesn’t need me. It’s building one that doesn’t need me for everything.