Ch. 15 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Take time off

You’ve gotten this far into your business – congrats! Let’s take a moment to reflect where it all began. Remember when you thought, “If I start a business, I could avoid the 9 to 5 typical job!” But then, you quickly realized that it was a 24-hour job and you had to stretch your expertise in areas you never thought you needed? During those *precious* moments of scarfing down food in the car, or putting on the same clothes as yesterday because you don’t have time to do laundry, did you ever feel a glimpse of hope that this madness would calm itself down? You can stop the hamster wheel and achieve the freedom you deserve.

Let go of control and put the systems, processes, and people in place that you can trust to run your business without you. As an example, you might need to hire more talent for your business and you might not have enough time to do a background check of all the employees you would be hiring. In such scenarios, you might need to look for a trusted background checking firm like Checkr (https://checkr.com/background-check) or the ones like them that can conduct the process and filter the best possible candidates for your business. Similarly, you might also need to consider upgrades that you can do in your business’ operations that will save time and money. Is it automating your processes? Is it getting some Managed IT services in place? Shifting responsibilities to people with strength in that particular area or perhaps utilizing technology that saves countless labor hours and dollars? These are critical questions and a state of mind that a skilled business owner would always consider. What if something happened to you? Would your business still survive?

Write down your goals for 2016. What do you want your business and more importantly, your life to look like? Life is short. Do everything you can to make the most out of it now. It may not happen in one night, but take the necessary steps to put your business on autopilot so that you can take a vacation and get paid while you’re not working. Running a business can be time-consuming, and without proper resources, you may have to give a lot more time to your business than it’s necessary. To create an efficient infrastructure, an enterprise can incorporate tools such as AWS migration and managed services provided by a few software development companies. These apps can optimize your current processes and technology to align them with your business goals, as well as provide security from cyber threats, reduce expenditure on infrastructure, increase business agility through cloud services, etc. With these facilities, you can reduce your working hours, take some time off to rest, and reset your work schedule to increase productivity.

You may be burned out, but keep dreaming big and taking the steps to move towards your ultimate goal. Go on a weekend trip when you feel stressed, meet friends and family and always make time for yourself. Don’t let the work pressure stop you from chasing your ambitions. Maybe you want to purchase a commercial property for your business to operate from. If that’s the case, it might be worth finding a property and using a commercial mortgage calculator to make sure you find the best mortgage deal.

By now, if you’ve read every chapter of the comprehensive checklist, your business should be in a place where you can sit back and watch it run itself. If you’ve signed up to use Handlr, you can have a bird’s eye view of your business in action from anywhere in the world. Book that plane ticket, and experience life that you’ve worked so hard for. And give yourself a pat on the back! It takes guts, will, and fierce determination to be an entrepreneur. Here’s to a bigger, better business!

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