You’re a business owner – you did not buy yourself a job!

This is it. This is the most important concept to grasp as a business owner… This colors and influences every decision you make in your business.

Brad Sugars has another way of saying this. His definition of a business is, “A commercial, profitable enterprise that works without me.” Did you read that last part? Without Me!

In other words, if your business requires you then it’s not a business… You have just bought or created a job for yourself. See the difference? Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited refers to this as the owner being the Technician.

Why is it so crucial that your business can run without you? There are hundreds of reasons but I’ll give you 3.

1. It’s worth more – A business that is sold including a trained, experienced manager is always worth more than one that doesn’t have one. Consider there are basically 2 types of people who buy business. Investors buy businesses to make a return on their cash investment and these guys REQUIRE a trained manager in place. Entrepreneurs often buy businesses to make a return on their money but to also give themselves something to do. In other words, they want to be the Team Leader or CEO. However, if you have one of these people looking to buy your business how hard do you think it’s going to be to convince them that they can buy the business, get the return they want, AND work on what they want when they want? Worst-case scenario they can easily remove the existing manager if they really want to, however most people won’t do that.
2. You’ll enjoy it more – All business owners want the same thing – A business that predictably puts money in their bank account with the freedom to choose when they work and what they do. The only way that dream is possible is if you have a go-to guy or gal running the operations every day whether you’re there or not. Now if you like actually doing the plumbing for your plumbing business or tax returns for your accounting business who is going to tell you not to? No one. You’re the owner. You can still choose what you want to do when you have someone else in charge of putting out the fires.
3. The business will be better for it – If your job and responsibility every day is to work ON your business and not IN it, what do you think is going to happen to your business? Let me tell you. It’s going to get better. When you can start spending your time working on improving your referral system, customer experience, team building and retention, and shopping for better vendors (you know, all those things you don’t have time for now) isn’t it obvious that the business is going to be better?

So if you’re the technician in your business and there’s is just no way you’ll be able to leave for 3 months on a European vacation and return to a healthy business what are you going to do?

You basically have 2 options:

1. Teach yourself everything you possibly can about building a business to run without you. In other words, learn about business. Not your specific business or industry or niche. Just about building businesses in general. To do this, you’ll realistically need to read about a hundred books and put into action all the things you learn from them. Start with the books on my Entrepreneur Books list. You’ll also want to start learning from owners whose businesses do run without them and start attending seminars and webinars to help you learn how to maximize 3 essential parts to every successful business – Sales/Marketing, Finance/Accounting, and Service/Operations. If you’re this kind of hands-on, self-taught person, then by all means take this route. This is obviously what I have done and continue to do. It will literally take you several years and in the process you may realize that your business just isn’t capable of that vision and decide to sell it and look for one that can accomplish your goals.
2. Work with a Business Engineer to help get you on the fast-track. Enlist the help of someone who has already done the items in number 1 with one or more businesses and who can quickly evaluate the status of your business and help you put together the plan to move it to the next level. If you’re located anywhere in the US or Canada and have Internet access and a phone line, we can help. Contact me to learn more about the process. You can also read my blog about why business coaches and consultants won’t work to get a better idea of what Business Engineering is all about.

So what are you doing to do today and this week to take that step from a job owner to a business owner? Don’t put it off. If nothing else, email me saying you enjoyed the read and would like to try either option 1 or 2 above and would like to know where to start.

To your business-owning success, Bryan