Run a Business That Works Without You
When I was meeting with my marketing team a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing what we were going to put out as content for May – they believed a hot topic would be putting out information on how to run a business that works without you, the owner/captain. Whenever I hear that, my very first thought is that every business should be able to work without the owner or leader. It makes no sense to me that an owner of a business would be the entire business. Sounds like more of a job to me. But I guess it could be a business… one with a very low ceiling for growth.
For A Business To Grow It Needs Great Systems
To dive in a little deeper, this is just one of those BIG pet peeves of mine. Business owners or leaders should not be the main ingredient in their business. That would stifle any meaningful growth.
A truly successful business, one that can grow; needs good systems. The systems are the mechanics of the business, and there should be a system for everything. This applies to how you answer the phone, how you answer an email, the system of your marketing and sales funnel. It applies to the system of onboarding clients or onboarding new employees, to offloading clients or employees, sales, marketing, execution, you name it. Systems, systems, systems!
There are systems for everything, or there should be systems for everything. Then you hire really good people to run those systems, or you hire really good people to create, tweak or monitor those systems. Your systems should never be fully dependent on one person, ever. The systems can’t be dependent on one person and they certainly can’t be dependent on the owner, or once again, you’ve put the ceiling over your head.
Break Your Business Into Six Parts (of an airplane)
This goes back to all the different analogies that you might hear about business. “You have to get the right people on the bus!”, so say’s one analogy. “You’ve got to captain this ship!”, that’s another good one. But I like to refer to Don Miller…
Don wrote a lot of books but the one I’m talking about is Business Made Simple, and he also has a masterclass associated with this book. I love his analogy – it’s built around an airplane, think a Boeing747 or a jumbo jet. His analogy about the 6 main parts of an airplane in comparison to how a successful business runs, makes a lot of sense. He documents this in one of the workbooks that you can download if you get his book. In the workbook, he breaks the airplane down into six main parts.
He’s got the cockpit, and that’s where the leadership hangs out. He has the right engine of the airplane, and that’s your marketing. Then the left engine and that is your sales. The wings of the plane are your products and services that you sell. The body of the airplane is probably one of my favorites as the overhead of that business. And the fuel tanks are the cash flow of the business.
The Business Just Can’t Get Off The Ground
This airplane analogy is now my new favorite business analogy. I am going to read this little part from the book for greater understanding…. “In order for an airplane to be safe and air worthy, these six parts of the airplane need to be in working order and also exist in the right proportion to the others. Similarly, when each part of your business works together in the right proportion, your business grows at a healthy and profitable pace, very similar to the airplane flying”.
I love how the body of the airplane is the overhead. It will be really hard for this giant inflated plane to get off the ground if the body is too big. We find this all the time with businesses – that their overhead is bloated and the business just can’t fly. It is tremendously important to have all these things in the right proportion to one another. That being said, every business has overhead. It just needs to have the right amount.
Zone Of Genius
The other part that I really liked about this analogy is that leadership needs to be in the cockpit, they are the ones flying the plane. If you are the business owner or the only leader, you have got to be flying this plane! When you’re not flying the plane, and you’re going in the back, and you’re meddling in other areas, then nobody’s flying the plane and we all know what happens to a plane when nobody is flying it.
It’s going to nosedive and crash. However, if you hire a team who are in their zone of genius and they are flying that airplane, then you leave them alone, you leave them to do what they’re great at. Then you can go back and start serving the drinks, tinkering with your systems, or just work on the overall design, look and feel of your airplane.
Make This Business Worthy
One of my very favorite quotes, and I know I have mentioned it before, is by Steve Jobs. He says, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people, so they can tell us what to do”. I really love this and I often send this quote to some of my clients that are struggling.
They may be on the fence about hiring someone. They go back and forth and that’s one of my favorite quotes because it shows that you have got to get off the fence, and why. You have to invest and double down and make this business worthy of your bravery. Start with the systems, then go with the people. Or you can start with the people and have your people create the systems. If that’s not your zone of genius. Either way, you can create and set up the systems and hire great people to run those. Or, you hire great people first, to set up and create the systems and have them run those systems. At the end of the day, the result is the same – it’s not all on you, the business owner. It can’t be. Learning how to run a business that works wthout you is imperative. Systems, team, culture, cash flow, that’s the nucleus of any business that will grow, take away any one of those, and you’re in for a crash landing. These tips I created for small businesses will help you.
More Great Books On Systems
If you’re not sure about what a system really is or what it could look like, there are so many good books on this subject. Gino Wickman has a whole bunch of books, such as Traction, and he created the E.O.S. – you can look that up on Google. EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System. He spells out in his books exactly how to create systems and people love it. You can actually even hire an EOS coach, which I know is not cheap but I’ve heard it’s pretty transformative.
Mike Michalowicz wrote Clockwork and that is another systems book. Another way to create systems is just do them simply, yourself, and it’s very inexpensive to do. It would just take your time, or somebody else on your team’s time, to create them but they are very simple and there’s not a lot of money outlay to get those systems in place. Then there is, as I just mentioned earlier, Don Miller, who came out with Business Made Simple last year – it’s a very easy read. His airplane analogy really works so well and there are definitely a couple of “aha” moments in there.
Hire A Great Team
I am in a lot of Facebook groups for small business owners, women entrepreneurs, different industries of entrepreneurs, etc. One of the most common questions that I see posted, and I just saw it again last night is, “how do you find all the time in the day to get everything done? I’m running my business, I’m selling, I’m creating, I do my marketing and social media, I do my bookkeeping, and then there are my taxes…” The answer is you’re not supposed to be doing all that. Just get to your zone of genius, that’s what you should be doing. A recent blog post of mine addresses time-keeping and time-management.
Then you will hire other great people in their zones of genius and that will just up-level you in every way imaginable. That’s what you should be doing. If you think that you’re a business owner that needs to be operating pretty much every part of your business, then you’re really just short-changing yourself and your business and you can’t grow that way.
We’re all human, we all have limits. Stick to your specific zone of genius, hire a great team to surround you in the areas that you just don’t want to do or you just know that you’re not that great at. Then watch your business really take off!
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