Small business owners are often faced with challenges of priority that employees rarely experience.  They believe they’re completely responsible to their business when in fact the reverse is true: their business owes them everything.  They believe their most important role is in perfecting their product when, in fact, their true product, their enterprise, often begs for their attention.  They believe that unless they’re engaged in ‘doing’ they’re not truly working.  In fact the truth is that if they’re not engaged in ‘thinking’, ‘dreaming’ and ‘visioning’ they’re ignoring their most important task: planning the development and health of their business.  They believe they need to attend to daily tasks when, in fact, they must attend to all the tomorrows of their enterprise.  They think it’ll take less time to just ‘do it them self’ rather than train an employee.  In fact,  by ‘doing it them self’ they’re prevented from doing the work only they can do while engrossed in tasks a $10/hour employee could do.  They go into business to have more time and freedom and then become slaves to a starving master: their business.

Is the way it’s supposed to be?  Not in my play book.  Owning a business is a vehicle, one of many, that some choose to help them achieve the bigger vision they have for their life.  Yet somehow, that vision often becomes subverted along the way and the owner becomes divorced from that life; that life becomes a brief escape from their enslavement to the enterprise to which they now feel wholly responsible.  Can this change?  Yes; step one: recognize that your life is far bigger, richer, varied and flexible than your business.  Step 2: learn how to shape the business to be consistent with and responsive to the bigger priorities, values and goals you have for the rest of your life.  Want help?  It’s right here

Posted in business coaching, life coaching Tagged: attitude, business coaching, business ownership, creating vision, entrepreneurship, executive coaching, goal setting, life balance, living with purpose, living with vision, personal development, personal growth, shifting perspective, small business, small business owner, vision, work/life balance