Many owners of small businesses are hoping that they are able to create personal freedom and significant financial gain. However, they may eventually get the opposite results. When running our own business, it is possible that we will work for longer hours and harder that we would with an employer. Unfortunately, dream and reality can be miles apart. Many entrepreneurs end up feeling out of control and out of balance. It can be distressing to experience a gap between the reality and original expectations. In this case, we should try to manage our perceptions, which can actually turn out to be false.

Luckily, it is possible for us to create a breakthrough for our fledgling small business:

1. Determine our essential values: If we still don’t have proper values, this task can’t be stressed enough. Successful businesses are known for their ability to honor and uphold their core values.

2. Create a vision: It is important to understand that successful businesses also need to create a proper vision. In this case, we should know what we want to do in one, five and ten years in the future. We could write down our vision related to our business and personal life. However, we should set realistic goals, so we can focus our efforts.

3. Set goals: It is important for us to take a couple of hours each week to identify and renew our goals. There are key goals that are needed to move our business forward. In this case, it is also important to include our personal goals. We should picture ourselves and our company as thriving in the near future. At the end of the year, it should be the time to look back on our achievement proudly. However, we should know things that we want to accomplish. It shouldn’t be too trivial or too complex. It takes some time to be able to define proper goals, but at least we could determine things that we want.

4. Maintain good lifestyle: In reality, our lifestyle has a direct effect on the success of our business. Our business will suffer if we are imbalanced, unhappy, exhausted, stressed out and burnt out. In this case, we should allocate a few hours each week and even half an hour each day to do something that excites us most. We should also eat healthy meals, nurture positive social relationships and get adequate sleep. If our personal lives and work are imbalanced, we will do our business a huge disservice. When we are in bad balance, we will have less energy to maintain sharper focus to run our business.

5. Delegate tasks: Many business owners lack a particular important skill and they often need to hire someone to do specific tasks. In this case, we often need to delegate many tasks to ensure better results. Often, business owners have limited skill sets and they may not have the time to learn everything, from marketing to production to accounting to information technology to office maintenance.