Self-removal from your business should be in the fore front of your mind, vision and planning from day one. Sounds strange that we plan to remove ourselves from the very business we are about to grow and develop. Here’s a statement to remember. Your business will run better without you. You may be saying to yourself, I don’t think so, but it will, trust me. Sure, there’s a lot to do to get to this stage but if we are thinking this from the start then we can build a successful company with you working on the business rather than in it on a day to day basis. In order to achieve self-removal there are some fundamental principles you have to master.
Systems. With technology in this day and age, most, if not all systems can be automated through software and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Employees. Having the right people with right skill set in the right places. Invest in your people with training, coaching and mentoring from yourself. My philosophy is that I only employ people who are better than me.
Marketing. A fundamental part of any successful business. If you’re not marketing to your target audience, then you’re playing ‘fast & loose’ with your business and you may not have that business for long. Word of mouth only takes you so far and you’re putting the future of your business in other people’s hands, if they stop talking then you will more than likely stop trading.
Inner Circle. We are the average of the 5 people we spend our time with. Who are you spending time with and what influence are they having on you and your business? They may be holding you back and having a negative impact on you and you don’t even know it.
Financial Education. What I mean by financial education is understanding your numbers within your businesses. Again, we don’t want to over complicate things here. We need to use technology to our advantage and there’s a great piece of software called Xero that gives you a live dashboard of all the important figures to help you make decisions in your business, knowing you have a good or bad cash flow.
As these principles are so important to help scale any successful business, as you go through this book you will find chapters dedicated to these particular subjects. By now you should have identified through your vision, your end goal. Is the business being built to sell or are your intentions to pass it down to family members to run? As you are at the self-removal part of this series, I’d like to recommend a must-read book, Built to Sell by John Warrilow. The clue is in the title and is an easy read with plenty of information to execute your growing business. This book in particular has helped me develop my businesses. I read this book once a year and every time I read it something new resonates with me as I progress through my business journey.
I only employ people who are better than me
At some point, but mostly at the start-up phase, everyone becomes attached to their business. Some may even call their business, their baby. This is where we have to change our thinking. Your business is a vehicle to financial freedom. That is how we should look and think about our business. Yes, be passionate about what you do, but do not wrap your arms around it and cherishes it like it was your first born. We have to learn to let go and trust others with the vehicle. The business cannot and shouldn’t be built around you. It has to be built around others. Selecting others can be very challenging in itself. You will not get it right all the time, you may have to kiss a few frogs to find your prince. Be persistent here and your hard work will pay off long term.
To assist you from the start you will require a good organisation strategy. This will consist of you starting with a blank piece of paper and with a view to creating a hierarchy structure chart. If you don’t plan your structure from the beginning, as you scale further down the line, it’ll just be complete chaos.
Your organisation chart should begin with shareholder at the very top. And in that box, where it says shareholder, will be your name, which looks and feels great. Now the aim is to vision how you want your organisation chart to be. What roles will be required within the business. Under each role you should write names of who will carry out that role, just like the shareholder box.
As we are starting from scratch, you’ll find that your name is in every box of the organisation structure… You are responsible for every role at start up because there is only you in the business. This should give you an ‘oh shit’ moment. This is when you realise how big your task of scaling your business is, which should be the catalyst to drive you on and rise to the challenge ahead. Be consciously aware that this chart, once executed in your business, will eventually lead you to become independent from the day to day running of your business.
Once you have created your chart, I want you to sit and reflect on each position. Imagine having all these roles filled with employees who are just like yourself. These are people who you have mentored and coached into their position and are now better than you in that position.
While reflecting, a sneak feeling of how the end game looks should come over you. How does it feel?
Once again, we need to use this energy as motivation for execution… and execution of this organisation chart starts with writing individual roles and responsibilities for each position in the chart. This doesn’t have to be 20-page comprehensive document, a 1-page bulleted document will suffice. Start each one with your company statement and then bullet point all responsibilities for this position. At the bottom of the document create a signature strip both for you and the employee in readiness for when you actually fill this position.
To be continued…
