The Coach’s Perspective
“When I met Joe he felt totally trapped in his business and ‘burnt out’, working over 75 hours a week. He was always on call, couldn’t go out for dinner or a weekend away without constant interruption and hadn’t had a holiday abroad in years.
I asked Joe to read the eMyth by Michael Gerber, which bought home to him the reality that he was the ‘technician’ in his business doing everything, which meant that his business had reached the limits of growth – his only answer was to work more hours but he didn’t have any more!
We did a study of where his time was going, prioritised the important things he should focus on as the business owner and looked at the lower skill, lower value tasks which he could delegate or outsource. The first thing we did was package up all the routine administrative and book-keeping tasks into a job specification and hired a part time person to fulfil these. This gave him some 25 of his 75 hours back, some of which he gave back to his family and some to focus on developing the business.
Today Joe has 2 controllers in the business who take care of evening and weekend rotas, he’s able to leave the office by 5 pm every day to walk the dog and have time for himself and his family. Not only that, he had 3 holidays abroad last year, is working on average 45-50 hours and rarely weekends.
His business has grown from c. £800K turnover to over a £1m, they are in new premises and he’s now looking to take the business to the next stage which could be selling or his team taking over…”
