Do you feel like your business would fall apart if you weren’t there, even for a few days?
Many entrepreneurs create businesses that depend solely on them. It could be that you’re in a service business that depends on your expertise and customizes its approach for every client.
I did this for many years as a consultant. I’d amassed a lot of valuable experience, which my clients gladly paid for. However, it did require me to be involved in every project, selling, creating, and presenting.
Or maybe you’re a product designer and you’re the only source of the creative product.
Whatever the reason, when you create a business that depends on your presence, you seriously limit your options.
When it came time for me to expand my business from corporate consulting, I considered the possibility of selling that business. After all, I’d had 15 years of mult-6-figure income, and a large and varied group of loyal clients.
The thing was, it all depended on my presence. If I left, the clients would leave too.
It made me realize that the way to build my business was to create ways to generate revenue without my active involvement in every step.
Think about what you want from your business. Many people start with a rush of enthusiasm, thinking that they’d never want to leave, that they’ll run their business forever.
The truth is, our circumstances, focus, and direction change throughout our lives. That’s why it’s smart to think about what you might do with your business if you ever want to do something else.
Would you ever want to sell your business? Is it possible that it could grow to the point where you take it public and issue stock? Do you want to have family members continue the business?
These are questions worth asking yourself now, so you can prepare for it.
Even if you do stay with your business, you still need to unplug at times.
Then maybe you could take 2 weeks off and not have to give the office even one call or check any emails! Liberation!
Maybe one of the best reasons to create this kind of space in your business is to allow you to concentrate on the unique genius work that only you can do.
This doesn’t all magically happen. You have to plan for it, and execute the steps needed to bring it into being.
Here are 3 strategies to start you on this process:
1. Take yourself out of the process. Teach what makes your business unique to your employees, so that they can sustain that vision in everything they do, without you managing every step. That can include product or service delivery, or marketing.
2. Write it down. Create an operations manual that outlines every process in detail. Get someone in your company to check it over and see if they can follow it. Add to it. Test it. Revise it, until it captures everything someone else needs to know.
3. Require your suppliers to live up to the values and standards (your Pull Priorities) that you establish. The first step in this process is to let them clearly know what those are. That consistency supports the work of you and your employees.
By building your own dispensability into your business process, you don’t just create a job for yourself, you create a real entity, one that has life. Plus, you create some space for you to rejuvenate and focus on family or other creative pursuits.
Being dispensable may not feel so great at first. Especially if you’re a, ‘to get it done right, I have to do it myself’, person. We all like to feel needed. It will help you to get really clear about why you’re doing it, and keep that goal in mind.
To create a business that doesn’t depend on your intimate involvement, resist the urge to try to control every step. If your operations manual is great, then you won’t need to.
So how about you and your business? Do you want to be dispensable?
Are you dispensable in your business? If you aren’t, what one step could you take in the next month that would make you more dispensable? Please share!