The 4 Roles Every Small Business Owner Must Separate to Avoid Burnout

You started your business because you’re great at what you do…and now you spend a lot of your time doing stuff that isn’t what you started your business to do.

You’re the marketer, admin, the finance team, the sales team, as well as the operations and delivery team.

Efficiency is a core principle of making sure profit doesn’t quietly leak out of your business but switching between all the different roles – the different hats – you must wear as a small business owner can destroy efficiency 

You’re busy, putting in the maximum effort, but you’re not always moving forwards. 

That’s not a time problem – it’s a structure problem.

This creates stress, guilt, overwhelm – all the uncomfortable feelings and emotions that can, in turn, impact your efficiency even more. 

No one is at their best when they’re stressed and overwhelmed, or have a constant feeling that they should be doing something else, or focussed on something else. It’s not a fun way to go about your day. 

Fear not though, none of this is because you’re bad at business!  It’s because every business needs a structure – a best practice way of operating…and if this is resonating with you, it’s likely that your business either has no structure, or doesn’t have the right structure for it, its size, and/or the type of business it is.

Why This Happens

If you’ve ever been employed, you’ll know that when you begin a role, you’re given a job description.  This description tells you what your role entails, all the different tasks it encompasses and the role’s purposes.  It acts as a guide for you in that role.

In a small business there is no such job title.  As we’ve already touched on, there’s also not just one role you’re responsible for – you’re responsible for them all.  And, most importantly, these roles aren’t defined or documented.

You don’t have that job description guide to help you steer yourself through your working days and weeks.

There’s no clear separation between your CEO or Managing Director of the business role, your Sales Manager role, your Marketing Manager role – or any of the other roles you have to assume.

This means you become incredibly busy, and reactive. 

Overwhelm itself can cause reactivity, because it’s hard to think clearly and strategically when you’re overwhelmed and stressed.  Your brain is hardwired to just get you through the situation, in the easiest way.

Therefore, even if you aren’t stressed and overwhelmed, this juggle and lack of structure still makes you reactive, because you tackle what’s right in front of you.

A customer has a request, issue or problem – you deal with it.

You have an IT issue, something breaks – you deal with it.

Sales invoices need sending out so you can get paid – you deal with it. 

You’re not planning your work in advance, or strategically thinking about the big picture of your business – you’re just ploughing through the urgent tasks right in front of you.

The Solution Framework

All the different roles can, essentially, be put into 4 clear pots – 4 clear roles:

• CEO Role: vision, planning, strategy – this is the important stuff that’s going to get you to your overall business goals.
• Sales & Marketing Role – the start point of all the actual business activity, generating leads and converting them to sales.
• Back Office Role – this encompasses all of the behind-the-scenes tasks, admin, finance, IT, etc.
• Operations & Delivery Role – this is the actual thing you do, the thing you started your business to do, it’s what you’re selling to your customers.

These 4 Roles exist in your business, even if you’re the only one delivering the tasks, the work, within them.

To help you avoid that overwhelm and stress – and reactive way of working – it helps to separate these roles. 

By separate, that doesn’t mean employing different people to tackle the different roles – it means create a clear separation of each role, and the tasks within them, mentally.

Clarity comes before control.

By creating this separation, you create clarity – and calm.  And once you’re clear and calm, you become in control.

At some point your business may grow to the point where you do want to hire an employee or outsource some tasks to someone that can take them off your plate – that’s scaling your business up.  No business can scale up without a structure in place to begin with – that creates chaos and loses profit through inefficiency.

You might never have the desire to employ people and think outsourcing isn’t for you.  You still need that efficiency within your business though, so you avoid leaking profit unnecessarily.

Clarity on the 4 Roles Structure will help with the control to create efficiency and avoid leaking profit.

The Practical Next Step

Once you have the clear separation of the 4 Roles Structure, you can better manage your day, and your week. 

You can batch tasks all relating to one role together, and tackle them at the most business sensible time of the week. 

Start by writing down all the tasks within your business and assigning them to the 4 Roles.

Look at your diary for this week, or next, and time-block sections of your week out by role and the tasks you need to complete for that role.

This is a great way to identify if a specific role drains you more than another.  If that’s the case, marry that role to a sensible time of the week when you’re more energised – last thing on a Friday probably isn’t the right time for it.

If you haven’t assigned any tasks, or blocked any time, for the CEO role that highlights a huge problem within your business.

You’re covering all the reactive tasks within the other 3 roles.  You’re making money and delivering the products or services you do…but you’re not making time to make improvements to your business.

It’s the improvements that take you from working reactively, to working proactively.  And when you’re working proactively, that means your business has real structure and you’re on your way to achieving your goals. 

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Each week we break down one practical structure that makes business feel calmer and more profitable.