How to Remove Yourself from the day-to-day Routine
We’ve talked before that the point of a system is to produce an output. I want to expand that and say that systems make creating outputs repeatable and scalable.
Repeatable means outputs are consistent no matter who produces them.
Scalable means you can produce more outputs by duplicating your systems or breaking them down into subsystems.
When systems are broken down into the right subsystems for the size and growth of your company, you’ll have a culture where everyone plays at the top of their game. This means work (including decisions) are made as low in the company as possible. That frees up your time and allows you to do what you do best.
A Systemized Company is Robust
Here are the attributes of a robust company:
The outputs are well defined.
Most have at least one metric or KPI (Key Performance Indicator) associated with them to track the quantity or quality of that output.
There’s a person accountable for achieving that metric.
Systems are well documented. This makes it easier to train new people as the company scales and ensures that people doing the same job do it consistently. The work is repeatable.
Subsystems are broken out so everyone plays at the top of their game.
You can use this as a little checklist to compare how robust each of your systems is. In my 25 years of working with business owners, what I’ve seen is that systems like AR and AP are the simplest to make robust. Systems like marketing and sales are more complicated but very important for scaling. The ones I see least robust are hiring and planning systems. These are also important but not as frequent as marketing and sales so they tend to get put off.
How to Own a Company Not a Job
As your company becomes more robust, as the owner you have choices about how you want to spend your time and even where you want to live. Here’s why. Each of those systems has a trigger. Some triggers are time based and need to happen with a certain frequency. If you don’t want to be tied to the day to day operation, you can have other people do that work knowing that the company will have someone competent producing all the outputs needed to succeed.
Now What?
When I systemized my company in 1993, I did it so I could move 1,500 miles away. I left the company in Texas and moved to the northeast closer to where I grew up. At first I kept some of the key financial systems and the marketing systems. This was because I was learning what marketing channels worked best and I didn’t want to outsource that learning. As I figured it out and systemized, it I handed the marketing off to others. As technology improved and banking was done online I also gave away some of the financial systems – though I kept control of things like bank reconciliation. This allowed me to grow the company while working just a few hours a week.
Others do it differently. They stay involved in the strategic and growth systems of the company. Or they acquire other companies and work to develop a holdco. The point is you have choices to do what you want. One caveat. If you’re very involved in the day to day systems of the company, you’ll likely have to scale it up a bit before you can afford to hire your replacements and still have enough free cash flow to take out the money you want. That’s not a bad thing.
The other thing I did after I moved away was start a side gig. I got involved in coaching (before it became a buzzword) and started coaching other business owners. Then I helped found the International Coach Federation and was their fourth president in 1998. Since then I’ve coached business owners across the US and in Europe. Good thing too, because I’m mostly retired now and don’t have a boat 😂 so my side gig keeps me working with business owners.
If systemizing your company sounds like something you’d like help with, I offer a free coaching session. You can sign up at https://john-3.youcanbook.me/. I can’t guarantee I’ll have time to work with you after that – we’ll see how my schedule looks if you want to continue.