You can’t do everything: Learn to delegate and hire staff
Running your own business can be very stressful, particularly if you’re just setting up or going through a rough patch. No-one will look after your business like you will, but you have to understand that you cannot do everything that needs doing.
When you spread yourself too thin several things happen, and they are all to the detriment of your business. When you decide that a particular department isn’t doing too well and you go along to help out you are effectively leaving your own job undone. This isn’t a good thing. If you are running the business you need to be in a position where you can run it, not on the shop floor cleaning up a mess that you could employ someone else to do.
What is distracting you?
You have to make a clear list of what is distracting you from being the boss and what needs doing. If you’re trying to run a business you don’t need to be ordering stationary or making deliveries, you need to be at the helm, running the business; i.e. telling others to do these jobs.
When you have identified where the weaknesses are in your business, don’t immediately jump in and try to rectify them; this is a mistake. First you need to see if there is an employee already responsible for the weaknesses, and if so they will need to be spoken to and perhaps disciplined in line with procedure to ensure they pull their weight in the future. Then look at any existing employees you have that could possibly pick up the slack first. Perhaps you could get them to do some training to enable them to do the job, or give them extra hours to get caught up with what’s not getting done?
Don’t lose your passion
When you begin to take on too much responsibility you can often end up losing the passion you originally had for the business. No business comes up out of nowhere, they always derive from one persons mind, are nurtured and grown from simple ideas.
When you begin to do everyone else’s job as well as your own you begin to lose touch with those original ideas and you lose interest; eventually this could cause you to quit and move onto something else.
Conclusion
Remember that when you’re doing someone else’s job, your own isn’t getting done. Now, depending on the type of business owner you are, this could mean that meetings you are supposed to go to in order to secure new deals may not be held, or perhaps the books won’t be kept up to date etc. There are many things that could be damaged by this.
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