Who are you outside of your business and why is this so important to understand?

“Most entrepreneurs I know only work half days: 12 hours.”

Have you ever heard that saying? Even if you haven’t, as a business owner you can probably relate to it. It’s not unusual to be working 12-hour days when you’re trying to bring your vision to life.

But there’s another side to the saying that bears thinking about: how do you like to spend your time outside of those admittedly long working hours?

It’s easy to forget when you’re putting in the hours to build your business, but there’s a lot about you that is separate from your work: your hobbies, your interests, and your goals for your personal life. Equally important is to remember why you set up your business in the first place. What will it allow you to achieve in your personal life?

These are the things that will allow you to build a future for yourself that truly aligns with what you want from life. And it all starts with understanding exactly who you are outside of your business.

Think of your business as a boat that is taking you to an exciting destination

When you set up your business, you probably weren’t doing so simply because you loved to work long hours. For every entrepreneur, there’s somewhere or something new they want to work towards. That’s why you might find it helpful to think of your business as a boat that is taking you towards that destination.

When you built that boat, you probably had a really clear idea of what that destination looked like. Maybe you wanted to:

Create a better lifestyle for your family
Build financial stability and independence for yourself
Challenge yourself to learn something new
Take yourself to the next level of your profession.

Whatever it was, it was likely to be something you really believed in because, even though running a business can be a rewarding and an exciting career path, it also requires a lot of hard work. So, having the image of that destination in mind likely kept you going in those tough early days.

Sometimes you lose sight of the destination because the journey becomes challenging

After a few years, you might find that the image of that destination becomes a bit hazy. Dreams of the future might have been pushed aside by concern for things like cash flow, business growth, and recruitment.

While these are all important for making a success of your business, they are simply instruments that help the boat to take you from A to B.

Even though the destination remains an important goal, after a while, you might have become so caught up in keeping those instruments working correctly that you entirely lost track of where you were headed.

3 questions to help you remember what your destination is

If you’ve got to a point where you can’t quite remember what you’re striving for in life beyond your business, here is a short list of questions to provide some inspiration.

What is your happiest moment? Who were you with, and what were you doing?
What is your proudest achievement? Why does it make you feel proud?
When did you feel most fulfilled or satisfied?

It’s extremely worthwhile spending some time deeply reflecting on your answers to these questions. This activity can help you to paint a picture of a future that excites and inspires you. From there, you can start to create a plan to help you achieve that dream.

A financial planner can help you to navigate towards your dream future

Sometimes, a little external help can be beneficial in building a clearer picture of the destination you’re heading for, and that’s where your financial planner could come in handy.

When you’re working hard to keeping the business afloat, thinking about the future can be really difficult. A financial planner can help you to take a moment to think differently about what you want. They have lots of experience helping people just like you to build a future that truly aligns with their values, and creating a step-by-step plan to take them there.

When you have established what you want from your life and your future, the next thing to understand is whether you will have enough money to fund the lifestyle you dream of in retirement.

As well as being a helpful sounding board for your ideas about the future, your planner will have access to a range of tools that help you to understand exactly where you stand now and how to build a financially secure future.

Financial health check

One of the first things your planner will do is to perform a financial health check of both you as an individual and your business. This could cover a range of topics, including:

Cash flow
Investment planning
Retirement planning
Any risks your business is facing and how to protect against them
Inheritance planning, including wills and trusts
Property owned by yourself or the business.

A financial health check benefits you by creating a holistic view of your finances, identifying any risks that you should protect against, and helping you to visualise exactly what you need to do next to move towards your desired lifestyle in retirement.

Cashflow forecasting

Another useful exercise you can do with your financial planner is a cashflow forecast. This is produced by entering data such as your current income, expenses, and assets alongside key dates, such as your retirement, and your expected expenses in retirement.

Using this data, together with assumptions about inflation and investment returns, the software generates a visualisation of how much wealth you might have at any given point in the future.

This exercise can help you and your planner to spot opportunities and risks. It can then be used to create an action plan to maximise your chances of being able to fund your preferred lifestyle after you’ve moved away from running your business.

You can read more about why a financial planner could be a business owner’s greatest asset on our website.

Get in touch

Running a business is hard work, and planning for your future outside of the business at the same time can feel overwhelming. If you’d like some help creating a plan to ensure your future lifestyle aligns with your personal goals and values, we can help.

Say hello to us [email protected], call us 0161 541 2826 or submit a contact form on our website.

Please note

The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate estate planning, tax planning or will writing.

The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate cashflow planning.

This article is for information only. Please do not act based on anything you might read in this article. All contents are based on our understanding of HMRC legislation, which is subject to change.