For many professional service firm owners, a 3-week vacation is something they can only dream of. They fear if they did take that vacation, business as they know it would come to a stop. The problem here is that the business owner IS THE BUSINESS or at least the primary rainmaker.
How does a business owner get into a position where they feel comfortable and confident about taking time off? No! It’s not by cramming as much as they can get done before the vacation and then suffering stress afterward, trying to catch up.
If you are a solopreneur, there is not much I can help you with here other than the before and after crush. Except to tell you that you should consider building a team.
Building and structuring a team is the real way to give the owner some freedom. By having people helping in the business, not only gives the customers someone else that can help them, but it will free the owner from actually being the primary technician trapped under a glass ceiling.
When the business owner keeps the business small, two people get hurt. The potential customers that cannot be served by the business and the business owner that has to do everything. Yes, the business is suffering by staying small.
So bust through that fear of hiring! Start scaling your business and hire your first couple of people. They don’t even need to be employees and all that comes with that. They can easily be part-time, contracted assistance, or virtual assistants. BTW, never start with hiring the next VP, but start with the most repeatable process in the company, which is usually a lower-paid position, and hire there. This frees up the owner’s time and allows for focus on the activities that only the owner can do.
Another great place to hire early is sales. When you hire a salesperson or a team, they actually pay for themselves with the increased sales that they bring in. The only pre-requisite is on the owner’s side of knowing exactly who the customer is, where they hang out, and what they want. Then, the commission motivated salesperson goes and finds them. It really is that easy. The hiring can be attractive by the commission and the results will show in a couple of sales cycles or they are quickly replaced. Not much time for error or cost of expenses to get them up and running.
The best way to be able to take a 3-week vacation is to build a business that can continue to run without the owner. It’s not that the owner isn’t needed, leadership and direction are very important details that the freed owner can focus on.
Marcia Riner is a business growth strategist & CEO of Trajectory Consulting. She helps professional service firm owners to optimize their business, drive growth, & prepare for an eventual sale. Together, we create your roadmap to improve, scale, & maximize the value of your company.
Marcia hosts a weekly podcast with video on YouTube @ www.Youtube.com/profitwithaplan or audio at www.profitwithaplan.com
She runs a Masterclass that teaches business owners how to scale their business so that they can sell it someday @ www.Scale2Sell.biz
Want more great ideas, download Marcia’s newest eBook “Think Outside The Box – 10 Reasons To Get Your Business Sale-Ready” available on www.TrajectoryBiz.com