Removing Yourself From Your Small Business
A lot of advice given to business owners is that you should aim to remove yourself from the business. This presents a real challenge for small business owners in particular, especially with a small team.
Customers may be familiar in working with you. You find it difficult to let go of everything. You know all the processes and how to improve these or implement new ones. You have good industry knowledge and contacts.
My advice, based on my own experience, is to take this very slowly.
You might not even WANT to remove yourself, and that’s OK too. Your business, your life, your choice.
It’s good to know the upside and the pain points of aiming to replace yourself.
The biggest tip I have on this is that you need to have everything else in good order BEFORE you even attempt to embark on this journey.
Tip 1: Focus on making your systems and processes GOOD (not perfect), well documented, easy to follow and known to all
Tip 2: Make sure you handle customer and client relationships with care, and keep your finger on that pulse.
Tip 3: Be 100% sure this is exactly what you want.
Tip 4: Get your team onboard. Release things on a slow and gradual basis, and keep your team updated on the upside for them (as individuals) and for the business as a whole.
One more thing to bear in mind if you’re not sure about following this path – if you adopt a “build to sell” type approach to your business, you WILL make things easier for yourself in the long run in terms of time, energy and money.
You might have to put in extra time time NOW to get things going, but you’re buying back time in the future.
Even if you have no plans to sell now, building a better business means you are giving yourself that option in the future…………and who knows what opportunity lies around the next corner?
#buildtosell #systems #processes #smallbusinessowners