In this episode, David Patterson tackles the difficult realisation many entrepreneurs face: their business has become a glorified job that leaves no room for a personal life. David explores the telltale signs that a business is running the owner instead of the other way around, from working midnight hours on admin to only taking holidays when the industry dictates.

Through personal stories of clients at a crossroads, David explains the difference between building a scalable asset and creating a high-pressure burden. Whether you are chest-deep in debt or simply feeling the weight of being the sole bottleneck in your operations, this conversation offers a roadmap to take a step back and move forward with purpose.

What You'll Learn:

- How to apply the one-week test to see if you truly own a business or just a job.

- Why choosing holiday dates based on business lulls is a sign the business is ruling you.

- The critical questions to ask if you are missing out on family time and considering an exit.

- Why scaling to millions in turnover isn't always the right answer for your bucket list.

- Practical steps for clearing overwhelming debt by focusing on one small win at a time.

Notable Quotes:

- If you stop showing up to your business tomorrow and it can't carry on, then it's running you.

- Taking holidays should be done when you want to, not when you're thinking you can squeeze it in.

- There is nothing wrong with having a go at running your own business and then realising it is just not for you.

- A 20-million-dollar turnover business does not necessarily mean a successful business.

Dowload a workbook from this episode HERE with key things you need to be asking yourself, key quotes from the episode and action steps to set you on the path to making your Bucket List and then ticking them off.

Contact details:

David Patterson on LinkedIn

The Bucketlist Accountant: Because financial freedom shouldn't mean sacrificing your wildest dreams.

Subscribe now and get ready to take control of your money and your life!

Co-host: Anthony Perl

Produced by: 'Podcasts Done for You'

Hashtags:

#BusinessOwner #FinancialFreedom #WorkLifeBalance #BucketList #SmallBusinessTips #Entrepreneurship

This episode provides real world examples of business owners who successfully transitioned from being overwhelmed to living their bucket lists. I'm your co-host, Anthony Pearl. Let's get into making your bucket list happen. Well, David, the business that owns you. I mean, how can you tell if your business is working for you or against you?

It's a lovely broad topic, but it's an important one, and I wonder if business owners are thinking enough about this and how you particularly can help with that.

One of the key questions that you can ask yourself is if you, as the business owner stopped showing up to your business tomorrow or weren't there for a week, would it be able to run without you? Could it carry on as it is right now if you were not in the business? And I think that's the biggest questions you can ask to see whether you are running it or it's running you.

Anthony: It's a very difficult one, isn't it? I mean, people are so much in the business and. Running it day to day to even have that pause to think about it in the first instances already. A step that most business owners don't take.

David Patterson: Yeah, and that's a really difficult part because a lot of small business owners starting out in their business, they're kind of doing everything.

Anthony: It's a fascinating idea as well that that holiday's the perfect example, right? That people tend to take the holidays in the December, January period, where they know everybody else is taking holidays and therefore the demand isn't there and that's why they take the break. Also, equally the most expensive time of year to take the holiday as well.

David Patterson: a hundred percent. And the whole point of taking holidays in my mind is taking them when you want to take them to destinations that you want to go to and doing the things that you want to do.

Whereas if you are restricting yourself to. December, January when everyone else is away and you know that your business will be quiet, then the business is still dictating to you what you can do and when you can do it rather than the other way around. So yeah, it's a taking, holidays should be done when you want to, not when you think you can squeeze it in, you know?

Anthony: And I think one of the telltale signs, isn't it, that if you're in that situation where. The business is demanding that you constantly paying attention. Then you have to question how you, have you got a business or have you got a job?

And then he'd get home from work, put his young kids to bed, and then he'd get onto the computer and do his bookwork, do his invoices, do whatever it is he had to do to finish the day off, sometimes working till 11, 12 o'clock at night. When we actually sat down and broke down how much he was getting from a profit perspective from the business, he kind of looked at it and he said to me, you know, I'd be better off just going and getting a job.

I wouldn't have the stress of trying to run my own business. I wouldn't be working late at night. And I, I said to him, you know that a hundred percent right. And within two or three months of us having that conversation, he'd closed his business down and he'd gone and got a job working at a TAFE teaching the trade that he knew.

Anthony: I suppose, let's talk Turkey then. If we are sitting here and you're nodding your head and you're going, I think that the business is really ruling the roost here. What do you do?

Because people start businesses, you know, will buy businesses because they have a passion for it and they drive to want to do something. But that realization means that you are at that crossroads. Do you do what the one guy do did, as you said, or what's the alternative?

David Patterson: I think it's gonna be different for each person to a degree in, in the scenario that I just told you about, um, this guy was just missing out on too much family time.

I think the questions that you've gotta ask yourself if, if you're at that crossroads, is, is running my own business? Is it a passion? Is it something I'm, I'm really passionate about and something I really want to pursue? If the answer to that is yes, then I think we then need to have a really good look at, okay, what do we need to do differently within this business so that we can make it.

Two things more profitable and less time consuming. So if we can get both of those things done and ticked off and the business is becoming more enjoyable, and you've got more time to spend with your family, more time to take the holidays. When you want to take the holidays, then let's pursue that. Or at least give yourself a timeframe.

The other alternative is if you're not passionate about the business and you've kind of started. Yeah, just out of, I don't know, you, you thought you could do a good job, better job than the person you were working for prior. If the passion's not there, then maybe that's for the time where you just draw the line in the sand and say, no, look, I'm just gonna go out and get a job and work the nine to five and be happy within that.

It's the bucket list. You, you have to have that bucket list and, and see is the business driving you towards fulfilling those bucket list items.

David Patterson: That's a really good point. And I think. There's nothing wrong with your business being nothing more than a glorified job if it's still giving you the freedom to do what you want and the finances to do what you want.

If you've got that, even if you, you know, you might be able to earn a little bit more somewhere else or, but then you're restricted on times of when you can go and do things and everything else that that's okay. If it's still achieving what you want it to do, that's great, but if it's not, and I think.

If you've started a business and it's not quite going the way you want it to go, give yourself the time to make it work. Give it to see if you can really make it work, and then at least you can look back and go, gee, it would've been good, but I gave it all. Didn't quite work. Move on. You know, no, no harm, no foul.

There's nothing wrong with walking away from it because these things just don't work out.

Anthony: Hey, everyone, just reminding you that if you want to really take action with your bucket list, don't forget to go to the show notes. Download the special workbook where all of the information from this episode is contained in it.

Hey everyone. Just a reminder, check out the show notes. There is lots of information in there, including a link you can click on to download a workbook from this episode dedicated to just this episode, and it will have information. About all of the tips and tricks that David has given in the episode.

Things for you to fill in and think about. So you are on your journey for your bucket list action steps, as well as some key takeaways and quotes from the episode. So you don't wanna miss that one. Please go and check it out in the show notes. A reminder again at the end of the episode, but it's one not to miss.

Before we get on with the next question, I just wanted, um.

Before we go on with the conversation, I just wanna remind everyone to please check out the show notes because in there you're gonna find a link where you will be able to download a workbook from this particular episode dedicated to all the tips and tricks that David's been going through, and we'll continue to go through in this episode.

It will contain some. Areas for you to fill in and think about your bucket list journey, as well as getting some action steps for you to follow. And of course some key quotes from the episode packed full of information. Please check out the show notes for more details on that one.

David Patterson: Talk to me a little David about, you know, where you had maybe some of these harder conversations and it has gone.

David Patterson: I guess once the client said to you, yes, I want to try and make this work the first part of.

Getting the important bits for them. So is it important that they make more money outta the business, or is it important that they free up their more time so that they can go off and do other things or More than likely, it's a combination of the two. So once we've got that, then it's just a matter of sitting down and analyzing the business and say, okay, what are some of the areas that we can improve on?

Are there some tasks that you are doing that we could employ someone else? And delegate those tasks to them, which frees up your time to either do some higher value work or just have more time to yourself. Are there types of work that you're doing that's more profitable than other types of work that you're doing?

And unless you do that little review, you just continue paying them. So a lot of those things are small, but if you combine two or three of them, you know, per month, they can add up and provide a reasonable amount of cash back to your business. And then it's just a matter of monitoring it once you've kinda worked out the two or three areas that you wanna work on.

To try and improve the business to help you achieve what you wanna achieve i's in a matter of sitting down every quarter and, uh, seeing how you've gone, seeing what other little tweaks we need to make, and then just staying on top of it and, and keep monitoring and keep moving forward, rather than just saying at the start, we need to change these three things.

Because at the end of the day, these changes are the changes the client said they wanna make to improve their business.

Anthony: I imagine there are some hard decisions that one might have to make in the course of that as well, because. You. The temptation often is pouring more and more money into a business trying to scale.

'cause everyone hears about scaling. You've gotta be bigger, you've gotta do this, you've gotta do that. So there might be some harsh decisions that need to be made and it, it could be team, it could be resources that you use, but that's part of the equation I gather as well.

David Patterson: Oh, a hundred percent. It is. And there's also a lot of pride involved of starting your own business.

And trying to have this perception that it's successful and it's going really well, there's sort of nothing wrong with sort of putting your hand up and saying, Hey, you know, I need some assistance here 'cause it's not quite working out the way I wanted it to work out. But also having, just to your point about the, you've gotta grow, you've gotta scale.

But it's not necessarily what I want to want 'em to do. You know, you need to have a clear understanding of what it is you are trying to achieve out of this business, and you can achieve that without having to be a 10 million, 15 million, 20 million business. You can be a small business and do just as well, you know?

And a 20 million turnover business does not necessarily mean a successful business. A $20 million turnover brings with it. It's a whole range of other issues that you're in, a lot of cases, a small business haven't even seen yet. So bigger does not always necessarily mean better unless it fits in with your goals, in which case, you know, let's, let's go for it.

Anthony: and sometimes you need to take a couple of step backwards in order to move a few steps forward in the, in the end. So you have to be prepared to do that as well, don't you, as part of the process.

David Patterson: Oh, a hundred percent. Because a lot of times as a business owner, you, you get, you're getting caught in the business, so you're just going day to day, just getting the work done and tuning it out and moving on and moving on. And in a lot of cases you start to create some bad habits or you put some bad systems in place so that every now and then you do need to take a couple of steps back and, and maybe it's a couple of financial steps back to correct the path that you're on and to.

Anthony: You're on the spot here. David, do you have a favorite story of a business that is. Come to that crossroads had to make some decisions and now is well and truly on the other side so that the business is very much working for them rather than them working for the business.

David Patterson: Yeah, there, there's certainly one, and this was one over a long period of time, but when I first started working with this client, they were.

Probably chest deep in, in debt. They had tax office debt, they had super debt. They had bank loans that they had supplies that they hadn't paid, and the whole thing was just kind of overwhelming. So they were so stressed and worried about the debt and how much it was and how we're gonna pay it that they couldn't.

Let's just chip away. So we set a plan in place. The business worked out some of the costs and some areas that could be improved. Just very steadily. The business started to get better and better and better. The tax debt cleared, the super got paid, everything got sort of into a much better shape. Cashflow became really positive and it got to the point where this person was able to sell their business, get a really good return on the sale of their business, and now they're retired at mid fifties, you know, 55, 56, and they're, they're living a great life.

So I think it's just an important thing to highlight that, that you're not gonna get everything done tonight or tomorrow. You need to have the plan in place and work towards that to get all these things to happen. But that was a really great outcome, you know, for, for them it was really great for me 'cause it was just nice to see these people, they were really good people get from where they were to selling their business for enough that they could retire at a pretty early age.

That

Anthony: it, they've gone from not even thinking about a bucket list to having a bucket list to achieving the bucket list and living the bucket lists. Can't ask for much better than that.

David Patterson: They've done it all. Absolutely.

Anthony: Well, that's all we have time for in this episode of The Bucket List accounted. But next time David looks at the one thing every business owner feels they're running out of.

Is in the show notes. You can connect with David Patterson on LinkedIn or visit bucket list accountant.com au to learn more about aligning your finances with your life goals. This podcast is produced by my team at podcast done for you.com au helping professionals share their expertise through powerful podcast content.

If you found value in today's episode, please like, share, and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. I'm Anthony Pearl, and until next time. Keep making your bucket list happen.