Get the business working for you
Here’s another question from one of my Bristol seminars: “I have to work so hard in my business I sometimes wonder if it is worth it. What does the panel think?”
Answer from me: “Somehow you’ve managed to get things the wrong way round. As Michael Gerber says, you’ve got to stop working for the business and get the business working for you. To me, a pretty good definition of a business is ‘a profitable operation that can work without you’. Otherwise what you have is a glorified job where you get paid an hourly rate for what you do.
“From Day One you should try to get the business to run without you. If you want it to grow this will require systems, processes and procedures to be in place so that other people can work in and run the business.”
I have no problem with people who have become self-employed and run their own small business by themselves. However, if you want to grow and develop your business then you may well be the bottleneck to its growth. You cannot do it all by yourself.
