This past week, I went on an amazing retreat for lawyers. Yes, I said lawyers. I wasn’t lost, but rather a guest and one of the sponsors of the LegalMax Strategic Retreat created by legal marketing guru, Dave Lorenzo. It was aimed at helping lawyers make more money and enjoy the practice of law. Dave’s tagline, or rather, his acumen in business, is “Make a Great Living & Live a Great Life©”. Now who wouldn’t want to do that?
But so many of us spend more hours in the office, on the phone or answering work-related emails, and we don’t have time for our families or ourselves.
There are things I’ve found you can do to enjoy what you do and streamline your business. Here are my top three favorite tips:
1. SET YOURSELF APART – Do your clients assume you are your business, even though you have dozens of employees? Is every detail of your business funneled into your office for you to take care of? If you answered yes, then it might be time to set yourself apart from what you do. Your business isn’t you and you shouldn’t define yourself by the business you own. Make sure you set yourself apart or you’ll wind up losing your own identity.
2. RELINQUISH CONTROL – Most business owners who start their company from the ground up have a hard time relinquishing control for fear things might not get done. But if your business is steadily growing, it’s okay to turn over control to others. For instance, I have a client who is a marketing genius. He is great at coming up with creative concepts to bring attention to his clients, but up until last year, he struggled to collect invoices and was in negative cash flow territory because he was doing his own books. He retained Brigade Bookkeeping, and now is focusing on what he really does best, while we focus on accounts payable and receivable.
3. STREAMLINE THE PROCESS – We have many clients who failed to relinquish control of their accounting until their businesses were suffered from it. If you’re having a hard time letting go, then before you do it, you may want to consider streamlining the process. Create a system of checks and balances you want a potential accountant or bookkeeper to follow. We do that for all of our clients. Before we even take on a new client, we explain our detailed processes to make sure that they understand how Brigade Bookkeeping will be keeping their books.
Most of us know, having a business is like having a baby. If we founded or “gave birth” to it, then letting go is tough to do. But in the end, relinquishing some control is necessary and crucial to living that great life we all dream about.
