This time last year, I was still far too involved in everything at CBC. I had a brilliant team around me, but I was still the person who knew everything, got asked everything and checked everything. If something needed doing, quite often my answer was still, “it’ll be quicker if I just do it myself” 😂 CBC had grown, but I was still very much at the centre of it.
I think one of the biggest changes this year has been admitting to myself that if I actually want CBC to grow into the business I know it can be, that has to change. Earlier this year I spent four months working with Litsa Smith, giving myself proper time to step out of the day to day, look at the business strategically and actually do something about some of the things I’d been thinking about for far too long.
A lot of what followed hasn’t been particularly glamorous. I’ve spent hours working on SOPs and capacity planning, looking at who does what, where things get stuck, what we genuinely have space for and what really does or doesn’t need to come through me. I’ve been getting things out of my head and into actual processes, getting clearer about roles and ownership, and trying to build CBC around the brilliant team we have rather than around me being the person who knows all the things.
I definitely haven’t cracked it. There are still too many things living in my head and I regularly find myself three steps into something before thinking, “Caroline, why are YOU doing this?” 😂 But I think that’s the biggest difference between me now and me this time last year. I used to see being needed for everything as part of being a good business owner. There was something reassuring about knowing I could answer it, fix it or sort it. Now I’m starting to realise that being needed for everything might actually be the thing that stops CBC becoming what I want it to become.
And actually, that’s probably what I’m most proud of this year. Not a turnover figure or a number of clients, but finally doing the slower, behind-the-scenes work to build CBC into a stronger business rather than just a busier one.
Being completely honest, I still find letting go really hard. I like knowing what’s going on, I like being useful and sometimes doing it myself genuinely does feel easier. I want a business that doesn’t need me in the middle of everything, but I’m still learning how to be the business owner who actually lets that happen. And I have a feeling I’m not the only one caught somewhere between “I need to step back” and “I’ll just quickly do it myself…” 😊
Caroline x
