Owner time spent in store

Hi! I’ve had my juice bar for about 5 years. I am still an active member of my team- meaning I work the smoothie station, the juicer, the register, I’m just like a paid member of my staff. But then I don’t always have time to get everything else done and I’m starting to feel burned out. How much time do you spend in store, hoe much time do you spend doing all the behind the scenes aspects? I also have 10 staff members, a manager, and a catering manager. I know I probably shouldn’t “work the floor” as much as I do but part of me enjoys it, I just feel myself getting burnt out everyday.

Hi, Casscerasuolo…

It’s interesting to me that you posted this at a time I’m wondering how much production I want to participate in. Also, how much day to day can a founder actually do and NOT burn out? I have recently finished training my first Juice Press team and I’m just realizing how much rest I’ve missed now that I have a moment to work on other business related things.

FSR I imagine an ultimate goal could be to be the “perfect presenter” who greets and presents what Cold Pressed Juice & what your company is about. Then ALL the duties behind the counter become things one can do to fill-in if needed, or be done for fun/enjoyment. I.e.: Pull shots on the espresso machine and welcome and serve customers, etc.

I totally know what you mean by enjoying the floor. I think putting limits on actual work-grind is a must and one must delegate more.

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Yes I must delegate more, as you know being a business owner its like your baby and sometimes its hard to fully let go even though you know it’ll be okay!

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At Goodnature, I try to make sure I can be focused on doing things to improve and grow the business, and not on day-to-day management as much as possible. This is how I would explain how to hire and delegate:

  1. Do a job duty yourself until you feel proficient at it and are confident you can train someone under you to take over. For example, I was the sales manager for a couple of years until I felt I had a good grasp on it.
  2. Hire someone that you think can do the job better than you can, train them, and let them take over. Let them make mistakes. When you delegate a job to someone, it doesn’t do you any good to hover over them and jump in every time you think they MIGHT make a mistake. Hovering over someone means there are now two people doing the same job. After they are trained, be available to help when needed but try to become hands off. I see a lot of business owners be too afraid to really delegate a task.
  3. Have regular meetings / calls / check-ins on the calendar. At Goodnature we have a 10 minute sales meeting every morning and talk about what’s going on, and a longer meeting every Monday.

It can feel like you are being a responsible business owner by being involved in everything going on, putting out fires all day, being super hands-on and micro-managing. But are you really doing what’s right for the business? If you’re tied up in the day-to-day, who’s going to spend the time to be creative and improve the business?

I personally get a lot of satisfaction over watching someone I hire do a better job than I was doing at a specific job duty. To me, that is what a responsible business owner should do.


Re: Charlie’s response… This was very timely & helpful. Thank you (Charlie).

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