Our Founder, Kellie, shares her experiences of building a more resilient business and her five essential tips on the process.
An uncomfortable reality – the high price of business ownership
Running a business is hard. In the UK, entrepreneurs work an average of 50.5 hours a week. That’s 13 hours more than the average working week of 37 hours. For many, the situation is even worse. Bizdaq estimates that 94,000 UK business owners are working 80-hour weeks and 660,000 entrepreneurs have their mental health affected by their work.
Sadly, I’m not surprised. In 2020, I had one day off work – for my birthday. At the time, taking a day off was unimaginable. It was only me in the business and my clients needed support. It was the middle of the pandemic, everyone’s working life was disrupted and I felt people were relying on me to help. Add to this, the pressure all business owners feel to succeed. I’d quit a well-paid, stable job to start my business – if that meant working every hour to make a success of it, then so be it.
I’m sure every business owner has said something like this to themselves at some point. But the reality is: it’s not sustainable. Working like this isn’t good for anyone and it’s also not good for your business. As Michael Gerber, business mentor and author, says
“If your business can’t run without you – if you can’t safely leave your business for a few weeks – you don’t really have a business; you have a job – with overheads!”
That was me in 2020. I was tied to my laptop and without me, there was no business.
How I made my business more resilient
In Jan 2021 I started working with a business coach. She told me that if I wanted to grow my business, I would need to start working on it, not in it. She said I’d need to start handing most of my client work over to associates. I was horrified – I loved working with clients, and I loved the work (a mix of diary & travel management and handling clients’ financial transactions). But I also knew things weren’t working and that for the business to grow, something had to change.
So, I followed their advice and took on associates. Everything moved quickly from there. We were able to do more work, take on more clients and offer a level of support that I could never have managed on my own. From that first associate, I have now expanded to a large team with a diverse range of skills. Day-to-day, I work with just two clients and those two clients are also covered by associates who can fill in for me in my absence. That means that there are around 20 clients whose work is handled solely by my associates.
Five practical steps I took to help increase business resilience
- Outsource – identify the skills you need to keep your business running and then find the people who can do them for you. You might want to check out The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss for a detailed exploration of this.
- Put proper systems in place to allow your new team members to do the work required – everything from training, to project planning with Asana and keeping in touch with tools like Slack. The Mindful Entrepreneur has a great piece on the four types of clarity required to run an effective business team.
- Introduce generic support@ email addresses rather than funnelling everything through your personal email address. This means that your team can check and manage the inbox, including incoming requests.
- Always make sure clients know when you’re away and who to contact.
- Capitalise on the strengths of your new resilient business. I’ve been able to expand our offering from legal (my area of expertise) to include property, finance and medical because these are areas my team is skilled in.
Where I am now…what a (more) resilient business looks like
My business isn’t yet fully resilient, I’m still very much involved. However, it can and does thrive without needing my involvement every hour of the day. That’s made a huge difference to me personally. Since taking the steps above I’ve been able to:
- Take more time off in 2023 than ever before.
- Go on a week’s holiday and take a digital detox, only looking at my phone once a day. To help with this, my PA looked after my inbox and knew to only text me in the event of something urgent.
- Delegate work that I’d have previously thought only I could do.
- Worry less! I have a fantastic team around me and I’m now confident to take that time away knowing my business is in safe hands.
Planning for the future – what next?
I’m always thinking in the back of my mind – what would happen to the business if I was unable to work? I’d need it to run in the background and continue, not just for me, but for the sake of our associates and clients too. So, that’s what I’m continuing to work towards – a business that could run without me.
For now, the majority of my role is on marketing, business development, customer relationships and managing the team. However, in the longer term, even these responsibilities could be outsourced. It’s a long journey, but I know that every step makes the business stronger and less over-reliant on me for its success.
Get help with your own business resilience
There’s a common theme in all business advice and literature on resilience and growth – you’ll need to either outsource or recruit so that other people can take on the work of the business. That’s where we can help…
We provide our clients with professional, remote business support, handling your day-to-day admin and business needs. You pay only for the time you need and aren’t responsible for any traditional on-costs (equipment, pension contributions, NI, leave and sick pay etc).
Check out the links below for more information, or book a call to discover how we could help.
