The Owner Trap (And How to Escape It)

Most business owners I meet believe that they have a time problem…

It's likely that most of them do.

On the other hand, what if their real issue isn't that they don't have enough time, but they have too much on their plate.

In other words , what if the real issue is that too many things in their business require their direct involvement?

What if “owner dependency” is what's REALLY holding them back from their next level of success.

If this sounds familiar to you, I assure you are not alone. 

When I first meet with a business owner and we start talking about what could be holding them back, it almost always comes back to that same thing. 

Too many things require their direct involvement. 

Sometimes it's employees that need help or customers that have questions – and no one else is really equipped to answer in a way that honors the highest priorities of the business.

Other times it could be that there are services to run, estimates to do and sales to drive.  And no one else is quite ready to do it as well as you do.

That’s okay when you're starting a business.

But eventually, with growth, you start running out of time to take the business to the next level - because you're at full capacity just keeping everything going and managing all of the details.

At that point, you aren’t really running or building a business. 

In many ways, you are the business. 

And that's the trap. 

To escape that trap you're going to need to do some things differently.

You're going to need to start to invest an hour or more a week working on the business instead of just in the business.

Try this...

1.      Take a look at the repetitive tasks that “only you can do”.  Ask yourself: which of these could I conceivably automate, train someone in delegate, subcontract, or have someone work with me, so I can begin to carve out time to work on the business.

2.      The next time someone on your team brings you a problem to solve. Carve out the time to solve the problem out loud, together.

And while you are solving the problem out loud, make a recording using zoom or another recording transcriber. Most of them have the ability to do a transcript, a summary and if you upload both to ChatGPT it'll even produce a step-by-step system for you to review.

And just like that, you now have a road map that can help someone else solve the problem the next time it comes up.

If you can do that four or five times a week, on repetitive challenges and problems, you actually begin to build a “how to manual” that can educate and elevate the skills of your team members.

Do this for a few weeks, and you're going to find that you free up some of your time to work on actions that actually build the business.

That's when business gets easier. 

And life gets a whole lot better.