I had just spent over $40,000 on my MBA and in the months before I graduated I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that investment.
Investing in yourself in terms of education is different than any other investment you make because it is really the first step in a process to take you to the next level. But how many times do we take seminars, courses, and workshops and then go back and end up doing the same old things?
I knew that I could go back to my businesses and things could stay the same or I could change. In order to move forward I enrolled in more education with the professional business coach alliance and became a certified professional business coach. I think my family thought I was throwing more money into a pit.
I realized that once I had invested so much in myself that I would need to step back from my thriving businesses to be able to focus on coaching and help other business owners reduce their stress levels and grow their businesses. But how do you step back from your business?
Whether you want to do it now or in the future, at some point you are going to want to step back from your business. This may be at the point you sell the business or perhaps, like me, you just want to start living the dream.
In my book Profit Yourself Healthy, I talk about the need to systemize your business.
A system is the process in which you do things so that each and every time your customers interact with you they get a consistent and reliable experience. You, as the owner, are able to count on your business to deliver the same results over and over again.
Also each and every time your employees do a task, they can count on the fact that they will do it in a certain way and the person coming after them will do it exactly the same.
Consistent results are produced by consistent processes. In order to reduce the stress of our employees, our management team, and even our customers we need consistency.
When you systemize your business you benefit in a number of ways.
First, you get a business that is able to operate and make money when you are not even around. Who doesn't want a business that can make money when they are sleeping or on holidays?
Implementing systems so that your operations runs almost effortlessly, with the right people doing the right things is the key to smart business ownership.
Secondly, when you implement systems, you get a business that is more valuable and people are willing to purchase it. Nobody wants to buy a business that is run haphazardly.
Businesses that are run by the seat of your pants, which change focus daily, that cannot be relied on by your customers or your staff to be consistent are worthless. This means that everything that has to be done, needs to pass through you.
If your daily decision making is paramount to the success of your business, you have a problem. The problem is that no one will want to buy a business that is totally reliant on you and your every decision.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is that when you have systems in place your staff know what to do and, as a result, you don't have to be micromanaging them.
They know what to do and each and every day they do what is required for your business to be profitable and of service to your customers. When this happens, you can come in late or not at all and your business will still run because your people are empowered to make decisions based on your systems that will allow your business to move forward.
I was able to step back from my businesses and focus on my coaching because I had processes in place that enabled my staff to operate without me.
Once you have effective systems in place in your businesses, you can do a number of things:
You can duplicate your business easily and either open new businesses based on your profitable operating model or you can franchise or licence your systems. Both are ways of generating passive income where you don't need to be involved in day to day operations.
You can work or not work, it doesn't really matter to the success of the business.
If you have a process to hire the right people and empower those people to make the right decisions, business becomes easy.
Whether you have one employee or 10,000 employees, great systems make for great businesses.
Dave Fuller, MBA, is the author of the book Profit Yourself Healthy. Email [email protected] to pick his brain so you don't have to spend $40,000 and two years on your MBA.
