"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got"

Could this be you?

You work long hours. You arrive before anyone else and leave after they have gone. You feel unable to trust other staff with much of what you do, either because you see them as incapable of taking on the more difficult aspects of your work or because you perceive them, rightly or wrongly, as disinterested in accepting more responsibility.

You receive text messages and calls from staff whilst you're out of the office. Perhaps a customer has asked them something, and they don't know the answer. Or they're not quite sure where to find something. Maybe they are simply passing on a message for you to call someone back, and when you do, you find that it's something that someone else in the office could have dealt with.

Your time in the office is consumed with sorting out operational issues and dealing with questions from staff, and you sometimes wonder why you employ them, as it seems that you are the one that ends up resolving almost everything!

Recognise yourself in all of this? Then you're spending too much time working in your business and not enough time working on it. You are thinking like a self-employed person, not a business person. Sorry to sound harsh, but it's true. A self-employed person is not bothered about business growth. Their 'business' is simply an income generator - a job, if you like, but without the employment status. Let's get something straight here; there's nothing wrong with that, if all you want to do is to generate a steady income with zero growth. But the moment that the self-employed person decides that they want to grow their business, they have to embrace a completely new way of thinking, and become a business person. Their days must be spent leading and managing others, putting in place a robust business model that will function operationally without them being there; a business model that can be replicated, time and time again, be it through the opening of further outlets or just the recruitment of more staff who can quickly be inducted into the company's ways of thinking and doing things. Our business person must write the blueprint for the business and then manage it.

David's 'Give me a break' programme is designed to help you make this cultural shift; to assist you in the difficult process of taking off your self-employed hat and replacing it with something more befitting of a business person. David will help you to systematise your business in much the same way that a franchisor would. There will be a system for everything, a role for everyone and a standard procedure to be followed for every conceivable eventuality. Your staff will know what to do without asking you. Your customers will be delighted by the consistency in service quality brought about by the removal of discretion in the way your staff handle issues. There is a 'best way' to do everything. Our job, together, is to find that 'best way' for everything that your business does, to record it, and then to get your staff to do it that way, the 'best way', every single time.

Fewer text messages and calls; fewer knocks on your office door and interruptions during meetings. And more time for you; more time to plan, manage, control; more time to think about the business and brainstorm ideas; and maybe even just a little more time to put your feet up occasionally and take that well-earned break!

Call David directly on 0161 266 1036 or email him at david@davidelliottassociates.co.uk