You are not your business. Your business is not you. Notes for the entrepreneur
The entrepreneur is highly creative, passionate, a risk taker…and usually lives and breathes their business 24/7.
Most entrepreneurs have little distinction between themselves and their business. Their life is their business, and their business is their life. It’s one giant mishmash of blurred lines.
So here is what I have just learned…the hard way. My business is not me. I am not my business. To truly serve both myself and the business, I need to keep the relationship between me and my business clean and clear.
Here are some ways of doing this.
1. Your business pays you. First. If you cannot pay your staff (and that would include you), then your business needs to either create more income or get an injection of capital…or it might need re-engineering.
Then you pay your expenses.
2. Create some clear non-business time. I have known great business people who will do their best work when they are not working on their business. They might be running, washing their car, doing the gardening, walking the dog, going to a movie. The key is to have clear and consistent boundaries between when your life as a business person/entrepreneur starts and when it ends. Are you able to turn off your phone? Disconnect your iPad? If not, see this as a sign that you and your business are merged.
Why is this important?
You and your business are in a relationship. Like any relationship, there are healthy ways of being in relationship and unhealthy ways. If your spouse or partner were all over you 24/7, would that allow you to function well? If you are all over your spouse or partner, would either of you thrive and be happy?
Your business needs perspective. Objectivity. It needs you to be healthy, well-slept, vital, alive.
You need your business to pay you, to sustain you at a financial, heart, body, mind and soul level. If it does not, if any of these elements are missing, then the relationship is not healthy. Emergency care might be required.
It is only when we separate ourselves from our business that we allow it to truly flourish. And in the doing, we also flourish.
