Are you a business owner or an employee? Think that through carefully.
Let me put it a different way: What would happen to your business and income if you were to leave today and take a three-month vacation?
If your business would fall apart and your income would stop, you’re an employee—even if you technically own a business entity. The truth is that the vast majority of professionals, and even many entrepreneurs, think they own a business when in fact it owns them. What they really have is a job.
They have to be physically present and doing the work or the income stops.
They spend their time working in the business, rather than on the business.
They don’t have the right people or systems to duplicate themselves.
They can’t sell the business because it won’t survive without them.
Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a job and a business in a parable:
There was once a village with a problem: there was no water unless it rained. To solve the problem, the village elders decided to solicit bids to have water delivered daily to the village. Two people volunteered and the elders awarded the contract to both of them.
The first, Ed, immediately bought two buckets and began running back and forth along the trail to the lake which was a mile away. He immediately began making money, but he worked terribly hard, waking before the rest of the villagers to run down to the lake for the morning haul.
The second man, Bill, disappeared and was not seen for months. Instead of buying buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a corporation, found four investors, employed a president to do the work, and returned six months later with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large pipeline which connected the village to the lake.
Bill’s pipeline delivered cleaner water than Ed’s and it supplied water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Bill was also able to charge 75 percent less than Ed.
Of course, Ed ran ragged while Bill was able to enjoy life—making money even while he was on vacation.
So the question is: Are you hauling buckets or building pipelines?
Now, let’s be real about this: Building a business is no small task. It’s incredibly difficult, particularly for trained professionals and personality-based operations. When you know as much as you do and are as skilled as you are—and you care more than anyone—it’s very challenging to replace yourself. But it is possible.
It’s a classic case of hard/easy, easy/hard. It’s easy to just show up and do the work every day, but your life will be much harder over time. Conversely, it’s hard to build a business, but it makes your life way easier over time. Doing so requires a totally different mindset. It requires that you do things that don’t immediately pay off.
I’ve had to do the same thing for my online consulting businesses, which are highly-technical and personality-based business. But over time I’ve been able to escape the job trap. And trust me, it hasn’t been easy.
For me, it was much easier to do a coaching call myself than to train a new coach. But I knew I could only be in one place at one time, and I wanted to impact more people, so I chose to train new coaches. I was committed to building a business.
There’s still progress to be made, but I rarely do coaching anymore. I’m able to work on the business rather than in it, and I have time to go on trips and focus on the things I love doing most.
Here’s how you can do it, too:
1. Build the Foundation of Culture
First, you want to be very clear on who you are, what you stand for, what you stand against and what you really want to define your organization. Write down your non-negotiables and never allow anyone in your organization to stray from them.
For example, we have everyone that works with us read our style guide which details our values, vision, and culture. We also do several interviews before hiring to make sure employees are a match, and we emphasize values over talent.
2. Hire the Right People, Train them Meticulously, Treat them Right
There’s an informal debate in the business world between Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth Revisited, and Seth Godin, the author of Linchpin.
Michael Gerber says that building a business is all about systems. He teaches to make your systems so simple that pretty much any warm body can perform them.
Seth Godin says it’s all about finding the right people—what he calls indispensable “linchpins.” Linchpins are proactive, responsible and smart. They see needs and fill them. They’re full of ideas for improving your organization.
My take is that any business needs both, but I side with Seth when it comes to hiring. You don’t want the lowest common denominators that will be the cheapest to pay. You want the best and the brightest who can adapt to change and proactively improve your organization. You want people who think like trusted stewards of the business upon whom you can depend to make good decisions.
The way to find the right people is to first create the position you need filled. Understand the mindset and skills that will be required to fill that position. Then hire someone whose soul purpose fits that position.
Be willing to allow other people to express their strengths and weaknesses to build networks and teams. There are some things you hate doing in your business that other people will love. Hire them, train them and let them shine.
And always remember: Culture is more important than talent. Yes, you want A-players, but not those who will destroy your culture. We’ve fired two of our best-performing salespeople because they were arrogant or refused to play by the rules.
Also, never forget to treat your team with the same level of respect and give them the same energy as your customers and patients. This creates loyalty and empowerment.
3. Define & Document Your Processes
Processes are how you want specific tasks to get done. They create structure and define task flow.
For example, if you’re a chiropractor, how do you want new patients to get processed and entered into your system? Write down the basic steps.
Processes are labor intensive and require people to run them. You can support and fine-tune them with procedures and technology later, but first you have to get a basic framework in place.
4. Fine-Tune Your Processes with Procedures
Once you have general processes in place and the right people to run them, you add detailed procedures to become more automated and efficient.
Processes are the big-picture steps outlining how you want something to happen. Procedures are the intricate details and sequences involved in delivering the big picture.
Processes are about outlining how to do the right things in the right way. Procedures are about doing those things as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
For example, in my business, one process was creating an on-demand educational system. I outlined how I wanted it to function and what I wanted it to do for members. I defined the benefits.
Next, I created the procedures for delivering it. I recorded videos and wrote content. My team created the website and built out the technology for delivering the content.
We kept asking, “How can we create value without requiring ongoing human labor?” This is a critical question to add procedures to automate your processes.
A warning with processes: One common mistake is to over-systematize your business, which can actually crush your business instead of helping it grow. You have to be adaptable with systems because things can rapidly change. Keep them very simple initially, and understand that they’ll never be perfect.
5. Leverage Content & Technology
Content and technology are powerful tools for implementing procedures, such as the following:
Content
Videos (digital or DVD)
Audio recordings (podcasts, CDs, MP3s)
Books
Ebooks
White papers
Email newsletters
Workbooks
Blog articles
Technology
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, such as Infusionsoft
Email marketing software
Ecommerce
Educational & content curation websites
Online landing/sales pages for lead capture
Automated email sequences
Social media
Content and technology create automated ways to deliver on your processes. For example, suppose a doctor’s current process for new patients calls for an educational meeting between the doctor and patient. Time could be saved by filming the new patient meeting, packaging it in a DVD and giving it to new patients instead of needing to meet one-on-one.
They could also create a series of educational emails and set them up to send each week automatically.
One caveat with this is that many people get too caught up in the technology before understanding whether or not it works for the people involved. Leverage technology to serve people, don’t focus on it to the detriment of people.
Content and technology are also critical for personality-based businesses. They make people feel like they know you even if they’ve never met you in person. Dr. Oz is an excellent example of this (http://doctoroz.com). No one thinks Dr. Oz is going to perform their regular physical exam, but they’ll trust the doctor he recommends because of how he’s utilized the media.
Live events are another way to reach more people in a time-efficient way. For example, many top-performing chiropractors do monthly or bi-monthly advanced health talks for patient education. They’re able to speak to 50 people or more instead of teaching them one-on-one in the office.
6. Let Go
The hardest part of all of this is simply letting go and trusting your people, processes, and procedures.
I’m used to doing things a certain way. But when I hired a CEO, I had to relinquish control and allow him to make my organization bigger and better than what I could do alone.
Even more difficult than dealing with differences in operation styles is the psychology of letting go. When I handed off coaching to other people and stopped doing it myself, I had to come to terms with it psychologically. Initially, I didn’t feel like I was creating as much value, which was very difficult.
In truth, letting go and freeing myself up allowed me to create even more value, though it took time for me to realize this. I had to learn the difference between maximizing control and maximizing value.
Value maximizers understand that they have to take more vacations away from the office and allow their people to become empowered and grow. They have to trust the value of others and focus on their own.
Too many professionals, by focusing on maximizing control, become mediocre at a lot of things instead of becoming amazing at one or two things. This leads to exhaustion and, in many cases, even becoming resentful of their profession.
The caveat here is that it’s a huge mistake to hand off too much control too fast. Don’t get so eager to let go that you create chaos. Think of this like a relay race. You need a good transition process. You need to adapt and adjust to challenges that arise.
But whatever you do, never make the mistake of believing you can’t build a business. You can. And by doing so, you’ll create more value and have far more impact than you ever could working hard in a self-imposed job.
To higher profits and better life,
Concepcion Guzman, MSIS, MCITP
P.S. If you got some value, do not forget to FOLLOW @concepcionguzman, RESTEEM, AND UPVOTE!
