Does Your Business Rely On You… Or Your System?

Employee-dependent businesses, lack of trust for employees, and never taking the time to systematize…so many things to get to this morning. I hope it’s been a great week. Thomas Joyner here with Business on Purpose.

We do a business owner lunch about once a quarter or so with businesses we have zero connection to. It’s so much fun as there’s really no expectation other than to invest back into some new businesses and make some new connections.

Yesterday I sat down with about 8 business owners and we began to talk all about Delegation…the goods, the bad, and the uglies associated with it. It was powerful and they left with some practical ways to own delegation in their businesses and left with multiple tasks to systematize and train on after they choose to delegate.

We were moving until we hit a roadblock. One of the business owners brought up the frustration of feeling like there were several things that he couldn’t delegate. “What do you mean by that?” I kind of asked him to go a little further in-depth.

“Well estimating is probably 80% of my job. There are so many variables. So many things you have to know and things I can’t really train on to get this off my plate.”

I agreed with him for a minute but then asked this question.

“So what happens if something happens to you?”

You see that’s what we have to think about. When we are the business, we’re severely limiting the ceiling we can achieve. Severely holding our business back from reaching its potential. But, what happens if something happens to us and we can’t estimate for two weeks, a month, 6 most? Does this business just stop estimating? Especially in times of COVID…we have to think these things through.

“The challenge,” I said, “is to get people to buy into your system, not buy into you.” Salespeople want to sell themselves first and foremost. Because oftentimes they view sales as someone’s not buying what I’m selling, they’re buying me.

While that sells a ton at first…you’re basically selling your time at that and becoming incredibly vulnerable as a business. But…when you can create a system that people are buying into, a customer experience that is a competitive advantage, then people aren’t coming to you for you, they’re coming to you for your system. Which, in turn, sets others up to help carry the load of estimating, bidding, coaching, and whatever complicated operations you may have.

It’s no different from when I started here at BOP. Scott was the face of this business for 7 years. When you called for business coaching you wanted Scott. And he is AMAZING at it. But think about this…

Think there aren’t a ton of different variables in our business? We coach businesses all across the country and world, in every different industry (in a time of pandemic I might add) and there’s problem-solving that goes into every coaching session. It’s a training nightmare getting me up to speed.

But here’s the thing Scott saw a while back. He doesn’t have to train me on 5,000 different variables, he just has to train me on our system. He put the time in to create a system that works industry-wide and then pushed me to focus on learning and implementing our system. 

And the verbiage changes right. No longer is it…” Hey come to me for coaching and we’ll get you straightened out.” It’s, “Hey we have to get you in our roadmap to get you moving in the right direction.”

You see the beauty and the power and the secret sauce, if you will, should be your system. That’s what unlocks almost unlimited growth. So now, it almost doesn’t matter who the coach is, the system is intact and the coach walks you through our system.

So, here’s the challenge for you. How do you build that system where you currently are? It doesn’t just happen. But…if you want your business to be able to thrive if something happens to you, for your employees to be able to run without wondering if they’re doing the right things, if you want to rip the lid off your potential and allow for huge amounts of growth…PERFECT YOUR SYSTEM!

Or at least get started. Yesterday we talked a ton about just getting started. Because the perfectionist in us wants to say that if we don’t get it perfected quickly then it’s not worth doing. No, Scott took 6-7 years building this system, and it’s still changing today as we learn and re-implement. But we wouldn’t be where we are today had he not written it down and started creating it.

Don’t let it scare you…but also don’t believe the lie that you can’t get things off of your plate. It’s just not true.

Hey if you haven’t already subscribed to our podcast or youtube channel…check out my business on purpose on both platforms. So much great content coming out weekly!

Have a great weekend y’all and let me know if you ever want to connect.

Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.