Mike Michalowicz explains his 4-D framework for building self-running businesses: Doing, Deciding, Delegating, and Designing. The key is identifying your queen-bee role, the single critical outcome your business can't survive without, then protecting it while delegating everything else. True delegation means assigning outcomes, not tasks, and trusting employees to make decisions.
There's this idea out there for people who don't run their own companies that once you start your own company, your time is your own. You've got tons of freedom. The truth is, for most people, that is not true. I remember for me, having my second baby and being in the delivery room on my email, answering messages to my co founder. But there is a way, according to our next guest, where you can have both work and life and a balance even in those early years, he says, that you can create a business that runs itself. Mike Michalowicz is the CEO of Profit First Professionals, a group of accountants, bookkeepers, and coaches that are helping drive profitability at entrepreneurial businesses. And he is also author of the new book Clockwork and design your business to run itself. That is a dream come true.
It is. I've lived that too, not having a baby, but with being absent with my family, even though I was present with them in person, absent in mind, because I was working away.
Got it. And by the way, that's not just if you own your own business. It's if you have a job that, you know, people's jobs don't. Don't turn off. Okay, so tell me how the audience can create a business that runs itself. You say it talks about a 4D mix.
Yes. We have to understand that most businesses go through four stages of independence. The first stage is doing. So when you start your business and you started a company, you do all the work in it. Right. The next level up is called deciding. Most entrepreneurs mistake it for delegation, though. Deciding is where, say you hire me and you say, mike, I need to do invoicing. And I come back a minute later and say, should I, jj, sort it by last name or first name? And you're like, oh, just do by last name. You make all the decisions. You're taskrabiting me. To get out of that, we need to do true delegation, which is the assignment of outcomes, where you say, mike, I need you to invoice clients on time so we get paid consistently and accurately. Can you handle that? Yes. And, Mike, you make all the decisions around this. So if you come against any roadblocks, you. You navigate the way around it. The challenge is when I make decisions, you, as the entrepreneur, need to actually support all my decisions.
Exactly.
So even the bad ones, like, if I mess up, you have to say, oh, that wasn't the outcome we wanted. But, Mike, I'm very proud of you. You actually made a decision that you felt was in our best interest.
Right.
So support all decision Making and then go to the final D, which is designing. Designing is where you have that vision for the outcome of your business, and you navigate around the tactical and strategic decisions to orchestrate all of the people and resources you have to get to that vision. That's where entrepreneurs need to spend a good portion of time designing, not doing.
Got it. That's the real thing is right? Once you hire good people in house or outsource and you get them and you trust them, then you have more time to spend elsewhere and you can trust them. Okay, declare your qbr.
Yes. That's for the queen bee role. So as I was writing this book, I studied all these different businesses to try to find the common thread of efficiency. Couldn't find it. J.J. then I found that beehives have the answer. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen this. You'll see a bee flying around your house, and all of a sudden this, like, massive hive is there the next day. They're extremely efficient. And they all know. Every bee knows the most important function of a beehive is the laying of eggs, because eggs spawn new bees, and that's what they need to survive and ultimately thrive. Every bee knows that that queen bee role, the queen bee is the one who lays eggs. Has to be happening. If it's failing to happen, it's everyone's responsibility to get spawning again. Now, one critical mistake entrepreneurs make, they say, oh, I am the queen bee, therefore I'm the most important. The queen bee is not the most important bee. She serves a critical function. But if the queen bee fails to deliver on it, she's expunged and a new bee is spawned. So it's the role that's protected. And every business has a qbr, the one critical role that your business hinges its success on. You need to find it, define it, and then protect it.
I love that. So it's not a person. The queen bee is not a person. It is something that needs to get done right. This needs to get out the door by January 3rd or whatever it is, or exactly whatever you have. Okay. Capture systems.
So businesses have grown up on SOPs. We were told you have to have checklists and write these great documents that specify everything the business does, and they sit on the shelf and no one ever looks at them. They're very inefficient, particularly nowadays.
