Edition 440 – The Purposeful Shift

One of the things that has struck me about small and family business owners, over the years, is how unhappy so many of them are in their business, and in their lives.

What they were once passionate about, being the building of a business, to build a better life for their young family, diminishes over time.

The initial passion gives way to the drudgery of the day to day. We turn up and do whatever it is we have to do in business, to pay the bills, keep our staff employed and continue to deliver on the promises that we’ve made to clients, suppliers, the banks, and a queue of others who, ultimately, come to rely upon us.

Interestingly, what strikes me is that so many business owners put in long hours, and travel away for work, under the self imposed belief that they’re doing what they’re doing, and working as hard as they are, to build a better life for their family. What never ceases to amaze me about this is that whilst the owner is away, doing the building, they’re not around for their family as much as they could be, nor should be. They’re missing out on the “today” in the belief the “tomorrow” will be better, however you define “better”.

We’ve just finished a 12 month engagement with a family business that has seen incredible change and growth, not only in the business, but in the family that this business supports.

Our remit was to help with a business that was seemingly out of control. The owner was running here, there and everywhere to keep things ticking over. When he returned home, he was so physically and mentally exhausted that he couldn’t devote the time to his family that he wanted to, nor what his wife would have liked him to.

Last year, we rolled out our “Building a Purposeful Family Business” intellectual property and it was this process that we went through, with this client, to help them identify the 10 key elements in their life, that their business should support.

There have been times over that 12 month engagement where meetings have been really tough. At one stage, Dad remarked to me that after one particular meeting, and I quote, “my head hurts!”. That’s hardly a 5 star Google review, but what it proved was how hard this business owner was working, to reconcile in their own mind, that the work they were doing, and the business they were building, were out of alignment with where they truly wanted to be in life.

This has been an incredibly rewarding engagement. They’re great people, with a young family, that reached out, and opened themselves up to be challenged about the type of business they were building, and how that was impacting their family life. They listened. They questioned their own long held beliefs. They implemented change. They stuck with the journey, when the road turned bumpy, and doing a u-turn back to what they know, would have been the easiest option. As a result, they’ve grown as people, and their ideal for their family business today is different to what it was 12 months ago.

These are the days, and the relationships, that make a difference to your own path in life, as a trusted advisor to small and family businesses. What a blessed life it is.

This Week’s Tip

“It’s easy to give up when the going gets tough.
It’s life changing when you stay the course, supported by the right people in your life.”