There are some phrases I hear from business owners all the time.
“People are difficult.”
“Cashflow problems are common in business.”
“Nobody cares about the business as much as I do.”
“If I don’t do it, it won’t get done properly.”
“That’s just what happens when you employ people.”
“Running a business is stressful.”
And my favourite:
“That’s just business, Andy.”
And sometimes they’re absolutely right.
Running a business is hard.
People will leave. Customers will let you down. Suppliers will screw things up. Costs will unexpectedly increase. Competitors will do stupid things. And occasionally something will happen completely out of the blue that you couldn’t possibly have planned for.
That’s business.
I can’t make any of that disappear.
But there’s something I’ve noticed after more than 25 years of working with business owners.
We’re remarkably good at getting used to things.
Something happens once and it’s a problem.
It happens twice and it’s frustrating.
It happens often enough and eventually we stop asking why it’s happening at all.
It becomes normal.
And that’s where “that’s just business” can become dangerous.
Because there’s a difference between something being an unavoidable part of running a business and something you’ve simply become accustomed to dealing with.
Your team needing you to answer every question isn’t necessarily just business.
Customers repeatedly paying late isn’t necessarily just business.
Working every evening isn’t necessarily just business.
Constantly correcting other people’s mistakes isn’t necessarily just business.
Making plenty of sales but never quite making enough profit isn’t necessarily just business.
And dealing with the same bloody problem every three months definitely deserves another question.
Why?
Not, “How do I fix it this time?”
You’ve probably become extremely good at that.
But:
Why do I keep having to fix it at all?
That’s a very different question.
And sometimes the answer is uncomfortable.
Perhaps you’ve tolerated something for too long.
Perhaps there’s a conversation you keep avoiding.
Perhaps nobody actually knows what you expect from them.
Perhaps a process that worked brilliantly when you had five employees simply doesn’t work now you’ve got twenty.
Perhaps something you are doing is part of the problem.
Or perhaps it genuinely is just one of those things that comes with running a business.
That’s okay too.
The point isn’t to pretend we can make running a business easy.
We can’t.
I’ve joked for years that, purely for the sake of variety, I’d like just one thing in my life — just one — to be easy.
I’m still waiting.
But perhaps that’s the question worth asking about your business:
Which bits genuinely have to be hard — and which bits have you simply got used to being hard?
Because those are two very different things.
And changing the second one might just make running your business 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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