What do you want your business to make possible for you next year?

It might be picking up the kids from school and hearing about their day without checking your phone. It might be getting back to training on a Tuesday morning, or taking two weeks off without working twice as hard to get away. Maybe you just want to get home with enough energy to enjoy your evening.

Get specific. What would an ordinary week look like if the business was working well for you? I’d put that on the table when you sit down to talk about revenue, profit and growth. It changes the questions you ask and the decisions you make.

How much of the business still comes through you?

In the early days, you did what needed doing. You answered the questions, checked the work and picked up the phone when a client called. It got the business to where it is today. It also taught people to come to you.

Now a capable team member still checks with you before making a routine decision. A long-standing client calls you directly because you’ve always picked up. Work lands on your desk for a final review because it always has.

Each interruption might take five minutes. By the end of the day, the thinking you meant to do about the future of the business has been pushed to tonight. If you’re planning to grow next year, ask yourself how much more will come through you if you don’t change the way you’re working now.  

What would it take to get your Sundays back?

Say you want to stop working on Sundays. What are you doing when you open the laptop? If that’s when you price jobs, review the team’s work and sort out the week ahead, those jobs need a place in the working week and someone with the time and authority to do them.

Could someone else price straightforward jobs if you agreed on the scope and gave them clear pricing guidelines? Who could sign off on routine work, and what would still need to come to you? If one client regularly takes more time than you’ve allowed for, is it time to talk about the scope or the fee?

The same thinking applies to a holiday. Which decisions do you want the team to make while you’re away? Give them a chance to make those decisions while you’re still there. Agree on when they should call you, then see how it works for a week.

Will it give you leverage or add to your load?

A big new client can look great on paper. Find out early how much access they expect to have to you. A new service might be profitable, but if you’re the only one who can deliver it, work out where those hours will come from.

I’d ask what the opportunity will look like on an ordinary Tuesday six months from now. Who’s doing the work? What still needs your attention? Will there be enough profit to pay for the people and systems that make it work?

That’s the distinction I make between leverage and load. Developing a team leader can give the business more capacity to take on good work. A new commitment that needs you in the middle of it every week adds load. Once you can see what a piece of work will ask of you, you can decide whether to change the terms, build the capacity or let it go.

Give people room to take ownership

Some of this will feel uncomfortable. You might need to tell a client who’s dealt with you for years that someone else will be their first point of contact. You might hand over a decision and find your team member makes it differently from the way you would have.

Before you hand something over, agree on what a good result looks like, which decisions they own and when you’ll check in. When they bring you a problem, try asking what they’d do and why before you offer your answer. That conversation is part of building their confidence to make the next call.

Put one thing you want into the plan

By November, next year’s diary can already be filling up. Before you commit more of it, pick one thing you want your business to make possible. Write down what has to change, who’ll own that change and when you’ll check whether it’s working.

You may decide an opportunity is worth a particularly busy few months. If you choose to do it, work out what support you’ll need and when you expect to get that time back.

You don’t have to lose in life to win in business. Give the life you want a say in the business you’re building.

Business by Design

Through Business by Design, I work with owners to build profitable businesses that support the lives they want to live. If you’re looking at next year and wondering how to keep growing without putting more on your plate, tell me what you’d like to get back. We can talk about what would need to change.

Book a free 15-minute business strategy chat with me