When you own the business, personal development shows up in four places, all of which have a number attached: your energy, the decisions you are avoiding, the standards you tolerate, and whether you are clear about what you want the business to give you.
Where does your week go?
Energy is the observable amount of your week spent on work that only you can do, and how much of you is left for the decisions that need judgement. Owners who are running flat make worse decisions, avoid conversations for longer and quietly take on more delivery because delivery is the comfortable part. Score your energy out of ten at the end of each week for a month, and note what the highest and lowest weeks had in common.
The test takes one week: log where the hours go in half-hour blocks, then mark every block that somebody else in the business could have done. The Owner Time Audit does the arithmetic for you. Total the marked blocks and decide which category to hand over first.
Which decisions are you avoiding?
Common examples are an unprofitable customer, a person who has been coasting for a year, a product line nobody buys, or a price that has not moved for years. Each has a running cost that nobody writes down. Write each one down with the date you first knew about it and a rough monthly cost, then pick the one with the highest cost and set a date to decide it.
An illustration of what one deferred decision costs, not a client. A long-standing customer bills £4,800 a month at an 11% gross margin, so about £530 of gross profit, and takes roughly 30 hours of the team's month. The same 30 hours spent on the work that runs at 38% would produce about £1,800. Waiting another twelve months to have that conversation costs somewhere near £15,500 of gross profit. Run the same sum on your own deferred decision.
Which standards do you tolerate?
Letting a piece of work go out slightly wrong, rescuing a job quietly rather than naming the gap, or accepting the late report for the third month each teaches everybody what is acceptable. List the three standards you most often let slide, and for each one write what good looks like in a sentence somebody else could check.
The aim is to be specific and early, because tolerating a problem and then losing your temper damages the relationships you rely on. Raise a slipped standard within a week, with the example in front of you, and agree what happens next.
What do you want from the business?
Ask what the business is for and whether it is producing that. Some owners reach a decent size and find the business does not give them the money, time or headspace they started it for, because they never decided what good looks like for them. Write down what you want the business to give you in money, time and headspace, with a number for each, and compare it with what the last twelve months gave you.
This is the question underneath Performance on Purpose — are you performing, and is the performance serving a purpose worth the cost of it? The two questions place you in one of four positions: drifting, on a treadmill of performance with no purpose behind it, holding a purpose your delivery never reaches, or both together. Mark where you are today and where you want to be in a year.
How do you tell it is working?
Score the three freedoms out of ten — financial, time and mind — write the scores down with today's date, and put a note in the diary for ninety days' time. Then pick one action in each of the four areas above. At ninety days, re-score and look at what moved. Count only changes in the business. Keep the scores and actions on one page, so the ninety-day review takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
If you want the guided version, Personal Coaching is that work on a fortnightly rhythm, with each session starting from the actions agreed last time, and the Mindsets library holds the thinking models we use in sessions.
Andy Jackson is Co-Founder of Buzz and the author of Performance on Purpose, the method behind the coaching here: build the person, develop the leader, improve the business. He writes about it at andyjackson.com, where the books and courses live.
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Frequently asked questions
How is this different from self-help?
The difference is what gets measured. Self-help asks how you feel about your habits; this asks what changed in the business as a result of them. Energy shows up in how much of the week goes on work that only you can do. Avoided decisions show up in margin and in the people who are still here. The standards you tolerate show up in rework and in what your team thinks is acceptable. If a piece of personal work cannot be traced to one of those inside a quarter, treat it as a hobby. Pick the measure before you start the work, so you know what you are looking for at the review.
How do I find time for this when the business is busy?
Ninety minutes a fortnight of thinking time and one action a week is enough to move any of the four. Put it in the diary as a fixed appointment with the same status as a client meeting. If it is the first thing dropped when a week gets difficult, the business depends heavily on you being available. Use the session to work on one of the four areas: energy, avoided decisions, tolerated standards or what you want from the business. Write the action down at the end, with a date, and check it at the start of the next session.
What if the real problem is that my motivation has gone?
Start by separating two things. A business that has stopped being interesting, or that has drifted from what you wanted it for, is a coaching question, and changing what you spend the week on often helps. Low mood that persists across weeks, affects sleep and follows you home is a health question, and it needs a GP or a therapist rather than a coach. If you are unsure which it is, see your GP first; coaching can run alongside medical support once you know.
Can I do this on my own?
Yes, if something external holds the rhythm: a business partner who asks, a peer who will challenge you, a written plan reviewed on a fixed date. Intention on its own rarely lasts, because the week fills and the thinking is the first thing to go. If you are testing whether you can, pick one of the four areas, write down the action and the date, and check in ninety days whether it happened. Write the result down either way, and use it to choose the next area.