Business owners often devote all of their energy to building and running their businesses only to encounter serious health problems just when their hard efforts are starting to pay off. Had they done a better job of looking after themselves, many could have enjoyed the benefits of their years of hard work.

There are three basic elements of looking after yourself: exercising regularly, eating healthy, and getting enough rest. Keeping your business alive also involves loving what you are doing so much that the down sides of running a business don’t drive you crazy. If you don’t love what you are doing, maybe it’s time for a change.

If You Plan to Go the Distance, Look After Yourself

If you run your own business, you need to take good care of yourself. Many business owners spend considerable time, energy, and money maintaining and looking after tangible business assets such as computers and equipment. Few pay as much attention to their own health, which unlike office equipment, cannot be replaced.

It is not uncommon for business owners to devote years to building their businesses, only to run out of energy and face serious health problems just as their investment of time and energy is starting to yield dividends. Instead of enjoying the success of their labours, they are dealing with poor health often brought on by years of neglect. Many of these health problems can and should be prevented. Without continued good health, you cannot expect long-term success in your business. To ensure that your business is ultimately successful, look after yourself.

Building Block

Looking after yourself means working smart and not just hard. This extends into your personal life, where keeping healthy and fit will pay dividends and help you survive and prosper in today’s business environment.

Hot Tip

Exercising makes your blood circulate faster. Among the benefits of this increased rate of circulation is an increase in the supply of oxygen reaching the brain. With more oxygen, your brain works better. You will think more clearly and work more efficiently.

Exercise: Even a Little Helps

Regular exercise helps prevent many health-threatening medical conditions. Health professionals continue to warn us about the risks associated with too much cholesterol, too many calories, and unacceptably high blood pressure. And there is growing evidence that by exercising regularly you can reduce these risks. Further, regular exercise can help strengthen bones, thereby reducing your risk of becoming immobilized and unable to run your business.

It does not take much time to realize the benefits of regular exercise. By exercising for 30 to 45 minutes three times a week you can expect some excellent results. The time devoted to exercising will be returned several times over, in your increased productivity alone. Most people who exercise regularly report increased productivity after workouts.

Eating Healthy

Another component of looking after yourself is proper nutrition. Unfortunately, too many of us eat too much of the wrong kind of foods. For many, time is so tight that they barely have time to eat, let alone enjoy their meals. They eat on the run, like an aircraft receiving in-flight refueling from an airborne tanker. Fast food such as donuts and hamburgers are virtually inhaled, barely touching the teeth.

A better approach would be eating healthy as often as possible. There are two main ingredients to healthy eating. The first is adopting a well-balanced diet. This means eating items from all the food groups: dairy, meat/poultry/fish, vegetables and fruit, and grains/cereals. It also means avoiding fried and junk food and drinking lots of water. If your diet is well balanced most of the time, there should be no problem with the occasional departure.

The second ingredient is eating slowly. This allows your teeth to chew your food in preparation for the digestive system to take over. Properly chewed food is easier to digest and requires less energy from your body. It is also a good idea to not do anything else, such as reading or watching TV, when you are eating. This enables you to concentrate on and control what you are eating, instead of mindlessly shoving food into your mouth and gulping it down while distracted by another activity.

Eating regular meals is also important. Make sure you eat breakfast and lunch but make them light. Your body needs the fuel, but a fatty meal will channel precious energy away from your brain to your stomach.

High-performance engines require top-grade fuel. Using poor quality fuel risks clogging the components with efficiency-limiting gunk. As humans we have bodies that are also capable of high performance. Why limit their efficiency by using junk food as fuel?

You Deserve a Break

The third and final element of working smarter is ensuring that you get proper rest. From our experience with work, we have learned that workers’ performance is enhanced when they take periodic breaks during the day. Similarly, we have also experienced the refreshing effect of a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, many self-employed people cheat themselves out of much-needed sleep believing that they have too much to do.

Entrepreneur Beware

Everyone agrees that alcoholism is not a good condition to have. Conversely, too many people, including individuals who run their own businesses, see workaholism— a similar condition, but with work taking the place of alcohol—as an admirable quality. Workaholism can be as destructive as alcoholism.

Building Block

To look after yourself, develop and follow a plan that involves regular exercise, healthy eating, and proper rest. Your continued good health is important. After all, you and your business depend on it.

By working more hours, many people convince themselves that they are doing more or better work. Unfortunately, this is not always true. Experience has shown us that the most rested and refreshed workers invariably do the best work. Despite the amazing technological advances that we have seen over the past decade, we have yet to see the elusive perpetual motion machine. Sooner or later all machines require some down time. So do people.

We all need breaks. In scheduling your time, plan to take regular breaks from work. This means doing nothing related to work. If you work at home, get away from home.

Use the following guidelines to schedule your breaks.

Weekly . At least one day a week.

Quarterly . At least one weekend away.

Half-yearly . At least one week.

Although it may seem like lost or otherwise unproductive time, the dividends from these breaks will help you to sustain the energy you need to be successful over the long haul.

There is no question that you and your business can benefit from your working smart. These benefits include increased productivity, feelings of well being, and reduced risks to the continued operation of your business.

Do You Love What You Are Doing?

As noted elsewhere, the unfortunate reality of small businesses is that 80 per cent fail within the first three years of operation. There are many explanations for this: lack of planning, poor management skills, financial resources that prevent investment in equipment, staff, or training, and weak marketing approaches.

However plausible these explanations are, I do not think they go far enough. I believe that the underlying reason for this high failure rate is the frustration or even boredom of business owners.

For most of us, running our own businesses is more than simply a strategy to earn a living. Of course, we expect to generate a decent income. But we usually expect more than that. We would like more independence and more personal satisfaction than we experienced while working for others. Certainly in my own law practice, I could meet clients’ needs as I thought best, independent of supervisors’ requirements, which invariably focused more on increasing billable hours and revenue for the firm than on helping clients. It was also very satisfying to help clients achieve their personal and business goals, whether it was buying a new home, planning an estate, or building a business.

Every business generates, or should generate, personal satisfaction for its owner. What do you enjoy about running your own business? Is it your independence? The technical aspects of the work that you do? Serving your clients or customers? Interacting with colleagues, associates, or your network contacts?

Starting a new business is a very heady and exciting experience. It is like having a baby. We tend to focus on the happy, positive aspects and ignore or downplay the work and

drudgery. As parents, we love our children enough that we cope with the unpleasantness of the dirty diapers and sleepless nights.

The same considerations apply to running your own business. If you love what you are doing well enough, you will find a way of coping with the frustrating and annoying aspects. If, as a computer consultant, you love looking after your customers’ computer problems, you will find a way of dealing with the never-ending administrative work. Similarly, if as a graphic artist, you love undertaking client design work, you will find a way of coping with marketing research or whatever else drives you crazy.

It is critical that you love the positive aspects of running your business enough that this enjoyment more than offsets the negative factors.

Entrepreneur Beware

Running your own business is not always fun. Not everyone sees administrative tasks such as record keeping enjoyable, let alone exciting. Some aspects of running your own business can be very frustrating. Unless you truly enjoy pain and suffering, it will be hard to tolerate pushing yourself to keep working hard when there is no cash flowing into your business. There are countless other down-sides of running your own business, especially if you do it alone.

If You Don’t Love What You

Are Doing...Change Something

When you start to experience decreasing satisfaction, it is time to do something to bring back the pleasure that you once enjoyed. There are many things that you can change.

Selling goods and services is what businesses are all about. This means that when it is time to make a change, the first area to consider is the mix of goods and services that you offer. Providing new goods or services might be the catalyst that turns the situation around to increase your sales and make the continued operation of your business more viable.

When a task or procedure becomes routine and automatic, most of us begin to lose interest in doing it. A routine or automatic performance of a task can jeopardize the personal attention that helps keep clients satisfied and coming back. Providing new goods and services can revive a declining interest.

When you no longer enjoy what you are doing, everything seems to become onerous. If you do not like what you are doing, why keep doing it? It is, after all, your business. Who says you should keep doing what you do not like to do? That’s for employees!

Learning new things, such as how to produce new products or the features and benefits of new products for resale, usually stimulates interest and increases satisfaction. However, before going too far down this road, make sure that you can continue to sell the modified or new goods and services. Discuss your proposed changes with your customers. If they like what they hear, you may have found a way of reviving your declining interest. Or your clients or customers may suggest other new approaches that pique your interest.

One such approach might be attracting new clients or customers. For most of us, meeting new people and developing relationships with them is usually a satisfying process. One way to implement this approach is to ask existing contacts, including clients or customers, for referrals to their friends, acquaintances, and contacts. As a side benefit, you might enhance your relationship with existing clients, another way of adding enjoyment to your business.

Another way in which you can make changes that can energize your business is to develop new contacts. When, for whatever reason, your contacts become less willing to help you and vice versa, the time has definitely come to develop some new contacts who can help you, and whom you can also help. Developing relationships with new contacts can increase the satisfaction that you derive from your business.

My own experience in starting and running a small business—my law practice—is not unique. Many entrepreneurs find that once the excitement of building something new has passed, their businesses become less satisfying and they start to lose interest.

Running the business is often not nearly as satisfying as starting one. If running your business is becoming less enjoyable, do whatever it takes to stop this erosion.

Once your satisfaction level starts to decline, your business revenue and your personal income will soon follow. The bottom line for everyone who runs a small business is simple: If your business is to survive, you must continue to enjoy it.

The Least You Need to Know

To ensure that you achieve your goals, look after yourself.

Looking after yourself involves exercising, eating healthy, and getting proper rest. You must continue to love what you are doing; if you don’t, change something