“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver, Poet
As business owners, it is not uncommon to ask yourself the question, ‘how big is big enough?’ Is your goal to achieve $1 million? $5 million? $15 million? Or even, $50 million?
Year after year, business owners fall prey to the same old trap of shooting for a big number in the hope that this time, this number really will be the magic number they need to buy their freedom back.
Your goal might be to step away from the business more, to stop working more than 80-hour weeks, or to bring on a General Manager. It is not surprising that you want to finally reap the rewards of years of hard work, effort and sacrifice.
Our clients, David and Melissa were just like that.
Every year they’d literally pluck a number out of the sky and go for it. And every year, they achieved it. In just two years they went from being a $7 million business to a $13 million business – certainly a very impressive achievement!
But there was a catch with all of this success. It was driving David and Melissa apart. With the rapid business growth came more stress, more employees, more hours working in the business, and more stress on their relationship.
So how did they fix it?
Achieving exponential growth for nearly every year of their seven years in business was burning David and Melissa out. They realised that more growth was not going to give them what they wanted.
They were both already working more than 80-hour weeks. More growth would mean hiring more people. And having more people puts more pressure on the business to continue growing.
As Melissa said to us, “It (the business) just becomes a bigger beast to feed.”
So, David and Melissa decided they needed to find business coaching Brisbane. And that’s how they found us at Kaibizzen. After talking to us, we decided the David and Melissa needed to take a radically different approach to setting their end of financial year targets. The couple have been working hard with us to write down, in detail, the lifestyle they want to live. A lifestyle that completely aligns with and fulfils their highest values.
Once David and Melissa had detailed the life they wanted to live, we worked with them to work out how much money they would need each year in order to make this a reality. As business coaches Brisbane, we tell our clients it is important to be aware that any lifestyle requires you to earn a certain amount of money each year in order to live it.
Once we worked out that number, it was simply a matter of reverse-engineering that number back to the business in order to find the net profit they will need to pull from the business each year to create it.
With the business targets now aligned to David and Melissa’s personal goals and highest priorities, there’s no longer the pressure to grow for growth’s sake.
They’re no longer feeding the beast, and they know exactly what they want to do with their one wild and precious life.
With their business now aligned to David and Melissa achieving a life that works for them and their family beyond the business, they’re free from the burden of growth for growth’s sake.
Whatever growth they do require is driven by a greater purpose and the knowledge that this time, it really is the magic number that will ultimately set them free.
You might be reading this and nodding along to the tiring pressure of growing your business simply for growth’s sake. If you would like to uncover your actual ‘magic number’, then you can download our Achieving Business Freedom Workbook. This free resource will take you through the process we went through we David and Melissa, step-by-step.
If you’d like to work personally with us at Kaibizzen to not only find your magic number, but also uncover a lifestyle that completely aligns with and fulfils your highest values, then contact us today. Here at Kaibizzen, we’d love to support you in creating a business which rewards you and your family for all your years of hard work and sacrifice.
What does it take to actually remove yourself from the day-to-day grind of business? Learn from our panel of Business Owners who've Been There, Done That.
