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Henry Ford said, “You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars.”

And that’s what we all have when we start our new job, or business.

And yet what starts with piles of enthusiasm can grind down into a living hell.

Too often I’ve talked with business owners who feel as though their company just can’t run without them. Either working in the business till all hours of the night, or even in touch every day they’re on holiday.

Business for them becomes a daily tussle and a fight for survival. Often there’s pressure from relatives to sell up and move on, or even to get a proper job where they’ve got some security. Even though we all know such security is illusory.

One business had a massive overdraft with their bank and much of the senior management time wasn’t devoted to the business, it was devoted to finding ways to scrape through so the overdraft didn’t grow larger and risk the bank calling it in.

And many businesses face clients who make excuse, after excuse for not paying their bills.

Of course as businesses get bigger staff issues arise that need to be handled too. And handling poor sales performers, where bad performance immediately impacts business is just one aspect.

It all makes the business owner feel at the edge of a tornado about to be sucked in, to land they know not where!

Then there’s the sorry state where so many businesses feel that if they don’t price match their competitors they’ll lose customers. They make themselves into a commodity where only those with a very low cost base win. And you can bet that the lowest cost base is unlikely to feature in a business in much of the developed world.

And through all this activity a business grows, adapts and improves itself, or it dies.

Eventually business owners can feel as though they’re in their own private prison, one where they get to break the same rocks in their business day after day. Even when they’re on holiday or at weekends the business intrudes into their lives the whole time.

The ones I’ve talked to who felt like that didn’t like telling anyone else how they felt, how could they? They perceived it as a sign of weakness. The result was that those business owners just didn’t enjoy what they were doing. It was worse than a job because they couldn’t mentally disengage at the end of a tough week.

And yet, in each business there were great aspects that the business owners could have been proud of, or had fun with before I got there. Yet they were too “scared” to stop doing what they were doing. They were always thinking of the next thing they had to do, or someone else had to do that they were relying on. They’re trying to get everything done, the branding, the finances, the staff, the customer services, the marketing and the selling.

Is this scenario common? Having coached executives and business owners, been a consultant and networked with a whole range of business owners over the years I’d say it’s more common than you might think.

And yet there are just 12 skills that any business can focus on completely to drive their business through the next stage of development and growth. And allow the owners to relax, have some fun and really begin to properly take the driving seat without feeling the need to get out and tighten the wheel nuts every few minutes.

If you’re interested in learning about the 12 skills you need to relax and grow your business, or your career, leave me a comment and I’ll email you a report I’ve produced that explains each one and gives tips on easily improving those skills. It’s called “How To Avoid Being Ground Down By Your Own Business.”

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