The Attention Trap

There comes a time in a business owner’s life when they feel, “Is this it?”

Working 12 hours a day. Nowhere near the income goal you decided when you started. 

Come to work in tension, go back home in tension.

Having no time for family or things that actually make you feel alive again.

All this is because the business is craving for your attention, and if you don’t give it.

It starts to break apart.

So you keep giving it attention.

Handling sales calls. Solving complaints. Answering questions.

Making repetitive decisions.

Because if you don’t, it starts breaking. Your source of income will stop.

You slowly become like a frustrated nanny running hastily every time the child cries.

But there is a good side to it.

A business constantly asking for attention means the business is alive.

Sales are happening. Operations are moving. Customers are interacting with your product or services.

A dead business will never ask for attention.

The attention is actually a cry for help to solve the problems your team and customers are facing.

When you see it from this perspective, you see that the business doesn’t care who is giving the attention. It just needs attention.

But right now, it only knows one person who can solve the problems.

YOU.

This is where you play the masterstroke that frees you from this attention trap.

You leverage.

You have been doing this job for many years for a number of times. You just have to find a way to teach it to your team.

Document your processes and expertise.

Set up systems to troubleshoot problems.

Train and hand it over to your team.

Let them handle the next cry for attention under your supervision.

One day, they won’t require the supervision.

That’s how your business gets all the attention, but now it does not come running to you.

You are now free to work on the future of your business or to do the things that make you feel alive.

This is where you experience life “beyond the bottleneck”.

That’s all for this week.

See you next Saturday.

If your goal is to build a business that relies less on you, you first need to identify where it depends on you.

Take the free Owner Dependency Audit.