Replace Yourself in Your Business

One of the challenges of replacing yourself in certain roles within your business is that you have to actually understand how to train that job, and that’s something that many people really can’t elucidate.  In fact, one of the key things that often happens when small business owners finally begin to relinquish control in their own company is they replace the “busyness” they once had doing all the jobs with a “busyness” of systems building only for the sake of building another system.

Simply put, it’s replacing one addictive behavior with another.

Let’s talk a little about the root of the issue – we’re told, as small business owners, that we have to be working long, hard hours to “make it” when, in fact, the opposite is true!  That’s right – when your company is actually open for business, you should be working a “normal” 8-10 hour day.  Not 16.  Not 11.

Why?

Because you took the time to systemize your company, not create more work for yourself.

Let’s look at an example:  You open a barber shop.  You like to cut hair, but you’re also pretty good with people.  For most people, opening that barber shop means that you’ll cut hair from open to close, then, at some point that week, you’ll take “extra” time to pay the bills, clean the place up, order supplies, handle any marketing of social media the business needs, handle any bookkeeping, and, of course, make sure to get any financial information to your accountant.

Thousands of barbers do that all around the world every week.

Why, though?

Sure, this is a simple example, but it’s no different in your small business, whatever you do.

Think about our barber.  Before he ever opened his company, he could create a business model based on a system that allowed him to have two other barbers – good ones, not great ones, that were paid solid average wage – whether that was by the haircut or by the hour.  Now, our barber might really love to cut hair, so he could also be on the schedule, but he wouldn’t have to be.

Our entrepreneurial barber could also look at all the “stuff” he has to do each week and develop a list of those actions.  For each one of them, he simply documents how to do the task.

Now he hires someone, a virtual assistant, to handle those tasks.

He retains a bookkeeper to reconcile the books for a few hours each month.

He hires a high-school kid to come by twice a week to clean the place up – following the exact system that our barber outlined for that job.

Now, our barber, if he truly loves to cut hair, can still do that, but he has time to do that and still run his business without working 60 hours a week.  I know what you’re saying, “but what if he can’t generate enough business to pay all these people?”

That problem was solved long before he opened the doors, because he took his time to research the location, the traffic, the demographics, and he crunched all those numbers time after time to make sure that his small business would be a success.

…And when it was, or when he wanted to take his wife on vacation, he wasn’t “stuck” in his company because he wasn’t his company.

Sincerely,

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