Business is never going to be easy. But that doesn’t mean we have to accept everything that makes it difficult as simply part of owning one.
I’ve been making the same joke for years.
Just once in my life, purely for the sake of novelty, I’d like one thing — just one thing — to be easy. Just so I could know what it felt like.
Because so far, nothing has.
And perhaps that’s why I’ve never been particularly interested in promising business owners an easy life.
Running a business is hard.
There are customers to keep happy, people to manage, money to make, decisions to take and problems that nobody saw coming.
That’s business.
But there’s a difference between accepting that running a business will sometimes be hard and accepting that everything that makes your business difficult is inevitable.
Because quite a lot of it isn’t.
“That’s Just Business”
I’ve worked with business owners for more than 25 years, and one of the things I’ve noticed is just how much we learn to accept.
Working late?
That’s business.
Being interrupted constantly?
That’s business.
Taking your laptop on holiday?
That’s business.
A member of staff leaves and suddenly you’re back doing their job?
That’s business.
Customers needing you personally?
That’s business.
Eventually, things that should probably be temporary become normal.
And because they’ve become normal, we stop questioning them.
We don’t ask whether there’s another way.
We simply get on with it.
I’m Not Suggesting Business Should Be Easy
There’s a lot of advice around that seems to suggest the ultimate objective of owning a business is to stop working in it.
Build the systems. Employ somebody to run it. Sit on a beach somewhere while the money arrives.
That’s never particularly interested me.
Most of the business owners I work with don’t actually want to stop working.
They like what they do.
They enjoy their customers, their industry, developing people, creating things and building something they’re proud of.
The goal isn’t necessarily to leave your business.
The goal is to have the choice.
There’s an enormous difference between going to work because you want to and going to work because the whole thing starts falling apart if you don’t.
Could You Replace Yourself?
For me, this is one of the ultimate tests of a successful business.
Could somebody replace you?
Not necessarily tomorrow.
And I’m certainly not suggesting you should sack yourself.
But could the business eventually operate, continue making money and continue providing you with an income without requiring you to be there every day?
Because until it can, there’s still vulnerability.
You might already have a pretty good lifestyle.
You might work three or four days a week.
You might take plenty of holidays.
But if you’re one resignation, one difficult customer or one operational problem away from being dragged straight back into the middle of everything, the business still depends on you more than perhaps you realise.
Don’t Try to Make Everything Easy
That’s not realistic.
Instead, start with a much smaller question.
Could this be a little bit easier?
That meeting you have every week.
Could it be a little bit easier?
That problem your team keeps bringing back to you.
Could that be a little bit easier?
That process everyone complains about.
Could that be a little bit easier?
That customer issue that always seems to need your involvement.
Could that be a little bit easier?
Often we go looking for enormous transformations when what we really need is a series of small improvements.
One clearer responsibility.
One better process.
One decision somebody else can make.
One recurring problem that doesn’t recur anymore.
One hour you don’t need to work.
None of those things transforms a business overnight.
But keep doing them and something interesting happens.
The business gradually becomes easier to run.
The Problem Behind the Problem
This is also why simply fixing whatever problem happens to be shouting loudest today rarely changes very much.
If the same types of problems keep coming back, there’s usually something underneath them.
That’s the problem behind the problem.
Rather than asking:
“How do I sort this out?”
sometimes the better question is:
“Why do I keep having to sort this out?”
That’s a very different conversation.
And quite often, that’s where making the business easier actually begins.
Better Doesn’t Mean Easy
Twenty-five years ago, I heard a Jim Rohn quote that fundamentally changed the way I thought:
“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.”
I still believe that.
I’m not interested in wishing away the difficult bits of business.
I am interested in becoming better at dealing with them.
Better leadership.
Better management.
Better people.
Better processes.
Better decisions.
Ultimately, better businesses.
Because as we become better at building and running our businesses, something else happens.
They become a little bit easier.
And then perhaps a little bit easier again.
Until eventually, whether we turn up tomorrow morning becomes a choice rather than a necessity.
Business will never be easy.
But what if running yours could be a little bit easier?
By Andy Walter
I help business owners build businesses that are easier to run, with less pressure and less stress.
Join us at the next Your Mastermind Group networking session.
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