{"id":17890,"date":"2013-02-05T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clearbooksltd.com\/?p=709"},"modified":"2014-01-13T17:29:15","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T17:29:15","slug":"this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/","title":{"rendered":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in audit at KPMG one of the questions we used to ask business owners and managing directors to try and identify risk was, \u201cwhat keeps you up at night?\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>What keeps me up at night as the CEO of Clear Books has changed as the company has grown but it\u2019s never been about risk.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The One Man Band<\/strong><br \/>\nWhen I was running Clear Books from home as a one man band, great ideas and an urgency to start working on them would literally keep me up at night. I would try to suppress the idea but inevitably had to admit defeat, jump out of bed and start developing a new feature at a ridiculous hour in the morning.<\/p>\n<p>That used to happen a lot and it was exciting and exhilarating. As a one man band there is only one person who is going to get your startup moving forward. You.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Team<\/strong><br \/>\nAs Clear Books grew I could no longer do everything myself. I built up a team and delegated.<\/p>\n<p>What keeps me up at night changed to worrying about progress on what had been delegated. Because it is delegated you cannot jump out of bed and do it yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Why is that taking so long? Who is doing that? Why are we doing that? The guys should be focusing on this. That still isn\u2019t updated. Have we contacted that person? Why not? When is that feature going live?<\/p>\n<p>Stress.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve realised it\u2019s important to recognise that you can\u2019t do everything yourself and things simply don\u2019t happen overnight, at least not anymore, so try not to worry!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in audit at KPMG one of the questions we used to ask business owners and managing directors to try and identify risk was, \u201cwhat keeps you up at night?\u201d. What keeps me up at night as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was in audit at KPMG one of the questions we used to ask business owners and managing directors to try and identify risk was, \u201cwhat keeps you up at night?\u201d. What keeps me up at night as the [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Clear Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/clearbooks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"100\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"80\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tim Fouracre\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@timfouracre\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ClearBooks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tim Fouracre\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Tim Fouracre\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bbee69f33d20633f23e4570772def494\"},\"headline\":\"This is what really keeps business owners up at night\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\"},\"wordCount\":286,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\",\"name\":\"This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif\",\"width\":\"100\",\"height\":\"80\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"This is what really keeps business owners up at night\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Clear Books\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Clear Books\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/clear-books-plc-icon-rgb-1.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/clear-books-plc-icon-rgb-1.png\",\"width\":400,\"height\":400,\"caption\":\"Clear Books\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/clearbooks\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/ClearBooks\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/clear-books\",\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/ClearBooksVideos\",\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Clear_Books\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bbee69f33d20633f23e4570772def494\",\"name\":\"Tim Fouracre\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ed40e153a36d6d33c75141cf20ed2b39337965852dc0a40acea7e4a64962f4b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ed40e153a36d6d33c75141cf20ed2b39337965852dc0a40acea7e4a64962f4b?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Tim Fouracre\"},\"description\":\"Tim founded Clear Books in 2008. Like many small business owners he worked from home for 15 months to get his startup off the ground. Today Tim enjoys helping Clear Books, its customers and its growing team innovate and achieve. Tim did his GCE O Levels in Ghana.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\",\"http:\/\/uk.linkedin.com\/in\/timfouracre\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/timfouracre\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/author\/tim\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books","og_description":"When I was in audit at KPMG one of the questions we used to ask business owners and managing directors to try and identify risk was, \u201cwhat keeps you up at night?\u201d. What keeps me up at night as the [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/","og_site_name":"Clear Books","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/clearbooks\/","article_published_time":"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00","og_image":[{"width":100,"height":80,"url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif","type":"image\/gif"}],"author":"Tim Fouracre","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@timfouracre","twitter_site":"@ClearBooks","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Tim Fouracre","Estimated reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/"},"author":{"name":"Tim Fouracre","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bbee69f33d20633f23e4570772def494"},"headline":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night","datePublished":"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00","dateModified":"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/"},"wordCount":286,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif","inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/","url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/","name":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night | Clear Books","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif","datePublished":"2013-02-05T10:00:13+00:00","dateModified":"2014-01-13T17:29:15+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/currency.gif","width":"100","height":"80"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/this-is-what-really-keeps-business-owners-up-at-night\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"This is what really keeps business owners up at night"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/","name":"Clear Books","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#organization","name":"Clear Books","url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/clear-books-plc-icon-rgb-1.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/clear-books-plc-icon-rgb-1.png","width":400,"height":400,"caption":"Clear Books"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/clearbooks\/","https:\/\/x.com\/ClearBooks","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/clear-books","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/ClearBooksVideos","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Clear_Books"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bbee69f33d20633f23e4570772def494","name":"Tim Fouracre","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ed40e153a36d6d33c75141cf20ed2b39337965852dc0a40acea7e4a64962f4b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ed40e153a36d6d33c75141cf20ed2b39337965852dc0a40acea7e4a64962f4b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Tim Fouracre"},"description":"Tim founded Clear Books in 2008. Like many small business owners he worked from home for 15 months to get his startup off the ground. Today Tim enjoys helping Clear Books, its customers and its growing team innovate and achieve. Tim did his GCE O Levels in Ghana.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk","http:\/\/uk.linkedin.com\/in\/timfouracre","https:\/\/x.com\/timfouracre"],"url":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/author\/tim\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18053,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17890\/revisions\/18053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}