In my experience, many business owners feel  frustrated  they are unable achieve a balance between the demands of running a successful business while at the same time maintaining a healthy relationship with their family.  Too often I hear business owners lament they spend too much on the former and not enough time on the latter!

In the past week this very topic was the focus of coaching conversations with thetwo  husband & wife teams running businesses in different industries.  However, the similarities between the two businesses was striking in that:

• Both were established six years ago;
• Both were very profitable with that level of profitability looking sustainable;
• Both have opportunities to grow the business further; and
• The business owners both felt overall they were financially secure.

Notwithstanding this, they also felt frustrated and angry that they were working too many hours in the business to the detriment of their family lives.  Their respective businesses were dominating their lives!

Given this the business owners both agreed that their context for the 2023/24 year will be:

the business must serve their needs.

To achieve this, the business owners agreed to implement the following strategies:

• For the business – to employ additional team mebers to share the workload presently undertaken by the business owners even if this came of the cost of a lower level of profitability
• For themselves – to engage in activities outside the business which they were passionate about such as painting sport & travel

In the coming months, I will be fascinated to see if the business owners go about implementing these two strategies.