How to Grow Your Business and Not Burn Out

Scaling a business can be thrilling and exhilarating – but it also can be exhausting.

It’s not unusual to hear those in the midst of growing a department, division or small business talk about how they’re working 60 to 80 hours a week, rarely seeing their friends or families. They may even admit they’re not sure they’ve brushed their teeth in the last week.

When reaching this point, alarms should begin to sound. Not just because no one can keep up such a pace, but because it means the person is actually hurting the business instead of helping it. Growth will actually stall instead of accelerating when one person is putting too much into scaling efforts, claim authors of a new book, “Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back.”

Authors Jeff Hoffman and David Finkel say that when one person is trying to do it all, then quality suffers.

“We kind of get into this mindset that no one could do this as well as I can,” Finkel explains. “So you end up partially doing a lot. But then you reach a point where you can’t give everything all of your attention and you start to take shortcuts.”

Another problem is that the manager or business owner who won’t let go of any of the work is seen as a micromanager, damaging the morale and productivity of other team members. Finkel adds that while you may believe you can add value to a particular scaling idea or process, the reality is that “your two cents worth might make the job 10% better, but you lose 50% of the buy-in from others.”

“We often overvalue our own ideas. Let other people do it their way. It may be different, it might not,” he says.

The authors also stress that a business owner or manager who is trying to scale a business alone will soon find it’s a formula for disaster. To illustrate the point, they say you should ask yourself this question: “If you were hit by a bus tomorrow (or otherwise incapacitated), what would happen to your business?”

They say that in a survey of more than 1,000 business owners over the last five years, they found the average business owner’s enterprise would fail in 30 days.

Of course, some people balk at even thinking about their own vulnerability, Finkel says. Then, they begin to worry that they must be indispensable or they will be replaced. Finkel explains that once they understand that creating a stable organization will protect their position, not eliminate it, they begin to see how the Lone Ranger attitude is harmful – to them and to others.

7 Principles of Scaling a Business without Working Long Hours

Hoffman, former CEO of the Priceline.com family of companies and Finkel, CEO of Maui Mastermind, have both successfully scaled their businesses. They say the way to scale a business without working longer hours means following seven principles:

1. Build a business, not a job. Remember the “hit by a bus” lesson? If you want a life, you’ve got to reduce your business’s reliance on you (see more here)