How To Make Your Business Run Without You

The, the idea of the journey of where you're going here, we're trying to transform your business from a team member dependent business to a team member independent business. For me, that transition really started with Melbourne Video Production because it was the first business that I was involved in where I couldn't do the thing. Like, I am not a videographer. I don't know how to shoot on the cameras, I don't know how to edit in Premiere, I didn't know any of that. We had a digital agency. We had a lot of requests for creating of content. And I thought, well, let's spin this off as a little separate business. And as I kind of went through that process, it forced me to build it without me in it. And I know how easy it is, particularly as a business owner, if you know how to do the thing to get pulled back into the delivery of doing that work. It's the hairdresser who can cut hair. It's the web designer who knows how to design websites. It's the accountant who knows how to do the tax. It's incredibly easy for you to fall back to doing the thing under pressure. Hey, this client needs something done. Hey, all hands on deck, okay? Business owner to the rescue. Business owner can solve all of the problems. And because you know how to do the thing, then the default is, okay, you're going to jump in and do it. And, and what that does is it just keeps on reinforcing the habit that you just always jump in. When we're talking about building evidence, and we talked about that in the last session, you're collecting all of these little pieces of evidence that whenever, you know, the shit hits the fan, you as the business owner jump back in and you solve the problem and you teach the team that this is how it's done as well. And you teach the client this is how it's done. So it's, this is a big part of what we need to break as your default position and your, your habit. And if you can imagine your business being able to deliver what we identify in the critical client flow without you, that's the real first goal. We actually want to deliver that core product or service without you and get it to a point where even troubles when they bubble up, your team know how to handle that situation. And once you make that happen for you, then it opens a world of possibilities because you see it can be done. And then it becomes a game changer and you only need to plant that seed. Just like I saw it in Melbourne video production. I then took that idea. And then I rolled it over to Melbourne SEO Services and then I started to replicate what we did on the video business, in the SEO business, in other product lines where historically I was dependent on. And then we started to productize all of the little delivery pieces that we did, whether it was an SEO audit, whether it was building a website. We started to then systemize it to the point where it was a little bit cookie cutter. Anytime that someone wanted something that was bespoke outside of that, then we would charge premium rates and that would mean I could afford to get a more skilled team member to handle it. So that way I was able to. Because generally what ends up happening is the business owner, because they know how to do the thing. Anytime there's custom work, they're the one that gets pulled in to do it. But if you have a, a vanilla offering, a productized service that you can offer, and this is the way that we do things, then it makes it much, much easier for you to find the right team members to do it. And again, only when it falls outside of that and it's the exception to the rule, then a more senior team member takes it. But at that point you've also charged significantly more, which means you still have an extra layer of defense before it gets to you, because you've got a more high skilled team member that kind of sits in between.