What to do when you realise you don't want to grow your business anymore?

Sometimes, being in business can be hard. Actually, a lot of the time it can be hard. This is especially the case if you started out excited and enthusiastic. You might have poured time and energy into a business. You gave it your all, and haven’t had much return. 

Sure, maybe there was a brief spurt and you were able to have a few employees. But for whatever reason, that didn’t work out either. Now you’re back to where you started, without the success you used to dream about, and with a whole lot of work instead. 

This is often seen in business. When things don’t work out, it’s discouraging. The vision that once motivated us is gone and we can easily find ourselves regretting going into business. 

Whether you woke up today and realised you just don’t want to go into your business anymore, or you’ve been feeling this way for a while. It’s disheartening. So what do you do?

You fizzle. 

After all, the patients still need seeing and if it’s not you — there are no other employees to see them now. And if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. You own a job, not a business, in this situation. It’s not the freedom you once thought you’d have ‘being the boss’. The E-Myth Revisited calls this, ‘the tyranny of routine’. Most people who take this route end up slowly losing passion and interest, until eventually, they close their doors. 

You can grow until you bust.

Or maybe downsizing and monotony wasn’t the issue. Maybe you were so busy, seeing patients, networking and attending conferences and enlisting new clients that you ‘went til bust’. You didn’t have the mindset to keep your business growth because you weren’t looking ahead enough. You didn’t see the rise in technology or online bookings that other businesses were using, or didn’t listen to complaints about the wait times, and now your patient base is dwindling. That can be just as disheartening. Often the response is to pass the blame to someone else, who’s job it supposedly was to keep an eye out for those things. But this is your business. You need the strategy. 

You can force your business on

This way often doesn’t lead to making many friends. You grit your teeth and try as hard as you can to keep going. You don’t adapt, you just press on with what you’ve been doing. You’ll likely burn out and your business will fold when you do. 

So what do I do?

Reassess what you’ve been doing. Make a plan and prepare to change your mindset. If you want your business to succeed, it’s going to take a lot of relearning. Especially if you’re at the point where you don’t even know if you can be bothered to try and grow your business. 

Take heart. It’s possible to reset and have another go. The second time around you have the knowledge and experience of what didn’t work the first time around. Acknowledging that things aren’t working is the first step. And if you’re reading this article, that means your mindset is already shifting to learn about more strategic (and successful) options for business functioning.