Having your own small business is one of the biggest dreams for many people. If you are lucky enough to have done so, and to have kept your business for many years, chances are you don’t want to just close the doors for good as you become too old to run the business any longer — but you also have worked hard and deserve to be able to retire.
Here are a few tips for keeping your business running as you age.
- Keep yourself in good health. This means seeing the doctor frequently, AND taking his advice — wearing a back brace if you have back problems, or seeing an audiologist if you are suffering from hearing loss.
- Start designating duties to others to lighten your load. A good approach is to slowly wean your business off of you — or wean yourself off of your business, as the case may be. This can be done by starting now to designate duties to your employees, lightening your workload a little at a time. My grandfather worked well into his seventies using this approach.
- Focus on hiring employees for the long-term. This means finding people you can trust and who will stay with the company for years to come. You want people who can represent your company’s and your best interests, even when you no longer come into the office every day.
- Start training someone to take over. It’s inevitable — it will have to happen sometime. Start thinking about it now. Find and train a manager you can trust to rule your kingdom in your stead, with you just looking in on them from time to time.