True or False: business owners have to work long hours all the time to grow their business? Answer: False.
Honestly, life is simply too short to spend it working more than you should. But too many business owners think that reaching success means having to hustle hard all the time.
I’m not saying that you don’t have to work hard to achieve success in business, you do, but that’s not the whole story. Success comes when you map out a game plan for your business and then execute on that plan with intention.
It comes when you hone in on your business offering, develop your skillset and focus on what works best for you.
This means that success may look different for you than it does for your peers. That’s okay. You need to define what success looks like the context of YOUR business and your business alone.
But it doesn’t mean that you have to overwork yourself to get there. You can reach success without burnout by working with intention.
The more you hone in on what you already know instead of trying to do everything and learn everything, the more you’ll grow your business in a way that is right for you. And once you do that, you’ll be able to grow your business while working less because you’ll be focusing on the tasks that you know actually move your business forward without getting distracted by all the other things your “supposed” to be doing.
Follow these 3 steps to actually work less and live more while growing your business:
1. Find Clarity
Find clarity about what you want your life to look like and how your business can serve that. Your business should support your life not burden it. By first thinking about what you want your life to look like, you can build your business to serve that life.
If you want to be able to stay home with your kids, that might mean you have to structure your business differently and work fewer hours, or different hours, to make it work.
If you want to be able to travel often, you have to keep that in mind when scheduling events, calls, or interviews.
If you want to grow your business on the side while you still work full time, you may have to keep it simple for a while instead of trying to scale until you have more time to devote to it.
Whatever life looks like for you, you can build your business around that and still make it work. It’s just a matter of paying attention to your needs and making changes to the structure of your business so that it serve your life well.
2. Adaptable Strategy
Determine a strategy that works best for your business with the flexibility to adapt it as needed. Your business will grow and change. Your life will grow and change. Different seasons require different needs and you’ll have to adjust to that.
If you build your strategy with the ability to be flexible as needed, you’ll be able to adapt and change more easily. This means when you need to make a tweak to one part of your business, the whole thing won’t come tumbling down. Think of it as a game of Jenga. When you start moving the blocks of your life and business around, you want to tower to stand firm.
3. Execute on Your Own Terms
No strategy will do any good without being able to execute it. But here’s the thing. You don’t have to execute it just like everyone else. Execute the strategy on your own terms.
That might mean slower growth than your competitor. That might be doing things a little differently than others. If your business requires you do to things differently so that you can better support your life, then do it that way.
There is no shame in doing it differently. The point is to execute. How you execute is up to you as long as you follow through.
It’s not about doing more, it’s about doing the right things with intention.
Are you ready to transform your business from scattered and inconsistent to intentional and sustainable, allowing you to live more and work less while growing a profitable business?
Join my FREE workshop where you will learn how to put a stop to the never-ending hustle and start building your business with intention.
