The Ball-Breaking Bits of Business Ownership

Being a business owner isn’t glamorous. It’s ball-breaking. It’s tough decisions made in the dead of the night. It’s a kind of loneliness that creeps in when surrounded by people who don’t quite understand your journey. The rollercoaster analogy didn’t come from thin air after all.

When I owned my agency business, all that stress (which I didn’t dare admit) led to waking up one day to darkness. I lost my eyesight from stress-induced inflammation in my brain. That’s a story for another day, but the point is that experience left me with burning questions. One them being:

What is it all for?

In all my years in business and working with hundreds of business owners, I’ve noticed something interesting. Despite what social media will have you believe, going it alone and being a business owner isn’t about the Rolex, the red-bottom shoes or the red Ferrari.

After freedom and creating our own destinies, business owners crave something far more fundamental: certainty.

When all is said and scrolled, we all want to feel secure in our businesses. Do you agree?

We want to feel certain that we’ll reach our goals, that the hard work will pay off, that we’re making the right decisions, and that our businesses can weather any winter. And ultimately we all want to create a life we love.

How do we achieve this elusive sense of security?

The answer lies in a concept often preached but rarely practised (consistently). Working ON your business, not just in it.

We create more security when we carve out the space and place to step back, assess, strategise, systematise, and optimise. That is much easier said than done I hear you say. Yes and here’s another kicker. Even if you managed to magically carve out time, how exactly should you use it?

That is the million-dollar question

I’ve spent nearly two decades exploring the answers to that question which I’ll summarise in two minutes:

There are seven pillars in any business, it’s about building out those pillars to have a pantheon that will support your business through any turbulence and be the unshakeable platform from which you grow sustainably. It’s about getting each pillar so strong that the goals of the business are the obvious result.

When you address and tackle each pillar with purpose, something magical happens. The chaos begins to calm, the frantic firefighting turns into momentum and the uncertainty starts to fade.

By the way, this is not underpinned by working harder, no my friends. It’s about building the pantheon brick by brick and a business that serves you rather than enslaves you.

That is possible when you confront the challenges, issues, and barriers in each pillar every week. Starting small, with 90 minutes a week. We can all find 90 minutes in a week, can’t we?

By building your pantheon the inevitable result is predictable, reliable and sustainable results.

Hope is not a strategy to create more security and certainty in business. It requires an effective strategy, the WHAT and HOW to work ON your business, a framework (the 7 pillars), the KPIs to track in each pillar, and a roadmap to execute it backed up with support to keep moving when the road gets bumpy.

Easy Day

If this resonates and making a big leap in your business sounds interesting I’d love to know. Where will you be in a quarter, in six months or a year from now if you answered the call of that million-dollar question? If this is a problem you are ready to solve, let me know here.

I would love to start supporting 7 small service-based business owners through this messy in-the-middle rollercoaster of being an entrepreneur. When I get enough interest, it’s all systems (or pillars) go.

Business is hard work. But it does get to be easy my friend. You deserve to have a business that loves you back and to live an extraordinary life you love. When is the right time to build your unshakeable pantheon and feel more secure in your business?

Find out what's in the Seven Pillars here.