When you first started your business is was just you. You were the business and the business was you. Or rather, it was an expression of you.

Now, even though you have a team around you, some of them handling the specialist stuff you can’t do, some doing the stuff you don’t want to do, some of them (but probably not many) doing the things you love to do, you are still the business. And it is still very much an expression of you. You make the ultimate decisions, you determine direction. Let’s face it, you take the ultimate risk. So, your team extends your capacity and your capabilities, but they don’t substitute for you.

Unless you change this, you’ll find it really hard to fully trust your team. To take a break. To grow your business.

So, it’s time to re-think your relationship with your business.

Your business is not you.

Nor is it the sum of all the people in it.

It’s a thing in it’s own right, with a life of it’s own, separate from you. In the way that a garden, once created, becomes separate from the person that designed it. And like a garden, a business needs people to keep it working. To tend it, keep it on the right track, help it evolve.

But let’s be clear here. The business doesn’t put people to work, the people make the business work.

You’re not just ‘the boss’, the ‘business owner’, the ‘founder’. You’re the creator and designer of your business.

And it’s up to you to share that design. So your people and all those who follow them into your business can make it work as you intended.