Like Michael Gerber Of The E-Myth Teaches, You Can Own An Agency That Is A Money-Making Machine If You Defuse This Ticking Timebomb

There is a ticking timebomb in almost every agency. As the old adage states: failing to plan is planning to fail.

"If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job," says Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth. "And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic."

My direct work with Gerber and his E-Myth Academy taught me there are three stages of a business. Which one are you in?

Stage one is getting your house in order.

At Indie Books, this took me eight years of experimentation and publishing 100 books. This means getting clear on who you serve, what problems they have, what solution you offer that is a value to them and a profit to you.

Stage two is growing the business.

We have grown 50% in the last two years.

When that happens you need to get to stage three fast.

Stage three is to prepare the business to run without you. That means systematizing the agency.

"Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results predictably," says Gerber.

This means writing the systems, finding the right whos to run the systems, training the whos, and then planning for succession.

Do that and you don't have a job; you have a money-making machine that you can choose to keep owning or sell one day.

“Typically, there is no succession plan in the vast majority of organizations regardless of size or industry,” says Daniel Feiman, MBA, CMC, author of The Book on...Succession Planning Systems: The 30 Secrets To Leadership Development (2024, Indie Books International).

The book explores the best way to succeed through well-detailed succession planning for the entire organization, not just the C-suite.

This is not just an American issue. Feiman has consulted and trained firms in over 30 countries, worked with organizations in many different industries, and taught at the university level.

He says building an organization’s bench strength is essential to leveraging the firm's future options, not just for the CEO but for all key players.

“True succession planning creates the team to be identified, assessed, and developed over several years,” Feiman states. “Some people will be ready much sooner than others and some roles are going to evolve over time.”

But leadership development is more robust than just choosing a successor for each role.

A leadership development program examines what skill sets are needed and will be required to fill various roles immediately and into the future.

“Whatever occurs throughout their careers, every executive and senior leader will be remembered for what happens after they leave the organization,” says Feiman, the founder and managing director of Build It Backwards, a consulting and training firm based in Redondo Beach, CA.

Feiman contends that what is needed is an ”enterprise-wide leadership development program that every organization should build for the future.”

Feiman uses innovative forms and templates to identify potential future leaders, assess them against a set of ideal criteria, create individualized development plans, implement results over time, ?track conditions within the organization and concisely analyze resulting data.

Once the data has been reviewed, a succession plan for all key personnel is created to ensure future success, which is reviewed and updated regularly.

He recommends succession planning be divided into the following five phases:

Phase one is preparation, where you set the stage for success and establish your vision of your future organization.

Phase two is identification, where you recognize the team facilitating this process, what your ideal leadership profile is, and what and who is critical.

Phase three is analysis, where you examine your staff to see who has leadership potential and where their gaps are.

Phase four is critiquing, where you review what could go wrong along the way and create individual development and action plans.

Phase five is implementation, where you look at what corporate knowledge is critical and what roadblocks to success and periodically reevaluate the program and process.

According to Feiman, firms that fully embrace succession planning typically record increases in productivity within months rather than years.