The Stop Doing List

INTRODUCTION

If you're like most business owners I work with, you probably got into business to earn more money, have more time and find more freedom. However, many business owners feel like they've lost control of their business and life.

Rather than earning more money, they're making less than they did when employed — and are often losing money in the bad years. If they have an employee or two, often they're paying them more than they pay themselves.

Rather than having more time, they're working longer hours, up to 70 or 80 a week, sacrificing a social life, their health and even family to keep their business running.

Rather than having more freedom, they find themselves tied down to the business, unable to take a day off, let alone a holiday, for fear their business will suffer.

Rather than the growing, healthy business they dreamed of having, they're stuck in a business suffering from:

• low profit (or even losing money)
• no growth
• stagnation.

Meanwhile, as business owners, they:

• can't exit their business
• suffer from burnout
• have health problems arising from stress.

Since entering the world of business coaching and consulting, I've come across these problems time and time again with my clients. As I watched them transform their businesses through doing less work every day, I was inspired to write this book.

The Stop Doing List is not about giving you more work to do; rather, it's about identifying low-value tasks in your day-to-day routine, then stopping them. I've watched ...