How Do I Build A Business That Doesn’t Depend On Me Being On 24/7?

Today's Q&A Wednesday's question comes from Gail, and Gail asks, how do I build a business that doesn't depend on me 24/7? Gail, Nicole and I lived this for years, and we're going to share with you how we got out of that life and what it cost us in that process. Nicole, do you remember the days of Webinar Ninja, our software company, which we started in 2014. What did our life look like when the business depended on us 24/7?

Yeah, I remember a lot. I wrote a lot of notes. Sometimes I get sweaty palms when I think about those days. I think the thing that I remembered, the first thing that came to mind was the notifications that I had on my phone. We had all our tools and apps on our phones, of course. But one of those apps that stands out is our customer support inbox. And I had that—

Intercom.

Intercom, yes, we used Intercom. And I had that on my phone. And I could just go into any inbox at any moment, every minute of the day to see if there was an issue. You know, it was, it was 24/7.

Yeah, the memory that comes to mind is we went to Italy with friends of ours, Jason and Caroline, please forgive us for the story. But we were going from city to city. We went from Milan to Tuscany, went to, you know, Florence, and then from there we went down south and went to Sicily. But as the trip progressed, the more and more I was tuning in back into work.

Yeah.

So, I remember vividly we were out in Florence and we're walking around in a food hall and I had to leave our vacationing with them because I had to do like a quick meeting with the engineers, the developers, to sort out some sort of issue. So, I had to like haul back to the Airbnb. I thought it was just going to be like 30 minutes, but it ended up being like 4 hours. And I remember, you know, that happened. And then when we got to Sicily, uh, you know, I was on my phone constantly trying to solve some problems or work with my engineers to try to figure out the next feature release. And I remember like Jason just kind of looking at me like, dude, we're supposed to be on holiday here. Like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

And I felt so embarrassed. And I felt like, maybe I need to do something about this.

That's a really standout moment. I remember how tough it was on you. Because you felt the obligation to the business. And it's like you had no choice. And I was like, okay, don't worry, you go and I'll stay with the guys. It's like we split our roles. But I remember when we were out that night, and you said you'd come back after like 4 hours. And I just kept looking at my watch going, oh, he should be here soon. He should be here soon. And it's like, I was constantly taken out of the moment with just hanging out with friends.

Yeah.

Because, you know, obviously I felt bad that you were back at the hotel room dealing with, you know, that thing that had come up. And it was just, yeah, it was just really awkward. And I felt we'd let down our friends. But at the same time, I also felt like, what else are we going to do? Like, that was— we had no choice.

Yeah, I mean, I think we told ourselves like, this is just what business is like. You know, we have to sacrifice our holiday because who else is gonna do it? You know, who's gonna care as much as I am and all that kind of stuff. And I think we bought into that narrative, which kept us stuck in that situation. I don't think we learned that lesson in the moment. I think when we got back home and, you know, the team depended on us even more as the team started to grow.

Yeah.

You know, at the time, I think our team was about, you know, 12 people and then we started to go 12 to like 16 to 17 to eventually 30 people. And I think that we both have different moments where the penny dropped and we were like, okay, this is not sustainable anymore. What was that moment for you?

There were a lot of moments. I think holidays is a good example of how we were constantly on at times where we felt like, oh, I just wish I could enjoy the moment. And you know that Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I love Christmas. And I remember one particular Christmas where Mom had had major surgery, had come out of surgery. It was great. It was pretty close to Christmas. And I just felt so grateful that, you know, everything had gone well. She was with us at Christmas. And there was this moment where I was like, oh, you know, this time is so precious. But we had support staff still operating during Christmas hours. Yeah.

We're 24/7.

We were 24/7. We understood as a company and as a service software that provided a service around the world that not everyone is celebrating Christmas at the same time. People who are using our service, our customers would be on at that time. So of course we're going to be able to deliver customer support even if it was reduced. And I just thought, oh, how many more Christmases? I know it sounds a bit dark or a bit depressing, but how many more Christmases am I going to have where I'm not fully present? My mind is somewhere else and it's In the support inbox, it's worrying about my team, making sure they're on, even though we had amazing team. It's just all these little things that kept coming up.

Yeah, 100%. I think for me, the penny dropped when we were doing an all-hands meeting, which is like the whole team got together on Zoom and there were like 30 boxes. I think Taki mentioned it in an interview once, like several pages of Zoom. I started to realize that why am I feeling so, you know, needed in this company? Why am— why are people depending on me so much? We have so many people doing so much, doing so much work. Why am I still like on call? And I realized that nobody here is empowered to make decisions. You know, like at the end of the day, you and I are only ones making the decisions or like at the end of the day when things get escalated or we need to make a call, You know, they come back to us. So that's going to happen several times a day, 7, you know, 7 days a week.

Yeah.

So I think that's when the penny dropped for us and we made a hire. And I think that first hire is really important to kind of start shifting the responsibility. And I really think that you need to start thinking about like, who can start making decisions? Because really decisions is ownership.

Yeah.

It's really like you own now a part of the decision-making process, and I don't need to worry about this anymore. And that first hire for us was Giuseppe, who's our CTO for the company, and kind of took over the tech side and a lot of the managerial side of the business.

So when you say our first hire, you're talking about someone, Giuseppe in that case, CTO, Chief Technology Officer. He's at the level that we trust to make high-level decisions outside of us. Because like you said, up until that point, we thought, oh, we have to make all the key decisions. So, he was a key hire because we felt like he was almost an equal, really.

I think the reason why a lot of us— I'm going to speak to this problem. I think a lot of us, we have this dependency or the— sorry, the company depends on us because we believe that we are like the best person for this job. And I think a lot of us, we look at the team that we're hiring, we feel like, oh, nobody's going to be able to do this. The honest truth is that you're just not hiring high talent people, right? When we found Giuseppe and were willing to pay his price, Yeah. we realized, oh, this guy's very talented. We just, we were just like not trying to find high level, high responsibility, high agency people. Uh, and the reason why this was so key for us is because, you know, we're a tech company, we're a software company. There's so many decisions that are dependent on my decisions on what's gonna happen, whether it's Customer support is telling us about a bug. Who's going to communicate that to the tech team? How does that fit into the sprint? How do we triage all the— we call them live tickets or use this tool called Jira to prioritize what the engineers are going to work on this week in the standup.

Yeah.

Run the standups, basically be the voice of the technology and the reliability of the software. So I think when we started to rely on Giuseppe, hired him and gave him the power to make those decisions, Things started to change dramatically.

Yeah. So for us, because it was a tech company, that was our key hire.

Yeah.

I think what a person or, you know, a business owner needs to think about, a founder needs to think about is like, who is that key hire that can make the level of decisions that's required?

And just for full transparency, like, we continue to do this. Like, we do this right now with our media company, The $100 MBA. You know, for us, one of the biggest key hires that we made is like hiring Josh, who's, you know, our video producer. And he's in charge of making sure that everything's shot properly and we, all the, you know, the data is saved and sent and edited properly, all that kind of stuff, right? So that is the bread and butter of this business, you know, is creating content. So you know your business, who can take that responsibility off your shoulders, who's competent enough to make decisions on their own, they don't need to go back to you and ask you questions.

Yeah.

So I think that's a huge, huge like unlock. And you get what you pay for. There's no diamonds in the rough. I always say this, like, a lot of people, they look for the diamond in the rough, like, I'm going to find this person that's like undervalued and no one knows about and blah, blah, blah. Like, they don't exist. They don't exist. I heard this example before. I forgot who said this, but like the Yankees, who's like, who is like a very popular baseball team in the US, they win so many championships and they also have the highest payroll. Like, it's not a secret.

Yes.

They pay for talent.

That's the thing. I think it's, it's being so clear and being strategic and kind of smart about who it is that you're going to bring on and invest in. Because I think one of the traps that people fall into is that they need to build this massive team. But you can do a lot with a very lean team if you've got the right players.

Exactly.

That was a sports analogy.

Yeah, there we go. This is your first right there. I just want to go back to like that first month. When, like, I just want to give people what the after picture looks like when you actually implement this. That first month when Giuseppe kind of took over and knew the ropes, knew how to run the standups, knew how to do the meetings, knew how to report to, you know, customer support team and make sure that they're communicating smoothly. I saw a dramatic— a dramatically less number of messages on my phone.

Mm-hmm.

Like every morning I would wake up and see like My screen filled with notifications from Basecamp, which is our project management tool, from, uh, Intercom, from, you know, customer support, from DMs from customers that know me personally.

Yeah.

All kinds of stuff. So when Giuseppe started to hit his stride after that first month, that's the first thing I noticed. I'd wake up in the morning and like I would have like one message just from my mom. Like, oh, this is great. Like I used to hate looking at my phone because I, looking at my phone always equaled problems I had to solve.

Yeah, you raise a good point there where people had access to you. I think maybe when you're starting out, you do give people a lot of access, customers, clients, because especially when you're small. And I remember that was one of the things that we were a bit mindful of. Like, you know, when people reach out personally, where do you kind of draw the line?

Right.

Of like, am I obliged to respond to them because they've DM'd me? I know this person, but really it's You know, 11 o'clock at night right now.

100%. 100%. All right. So let's talk a little bit about like what Gayle can do moving forward. Okay. And I kind of like to kind of break this up into 3 steps. We experienced all 3 steps to kind of be able to make that first hire. And that's really where it starts, like figuring out what responsibilities do you want to offload? When I say responsibilities, not just tasks, It's not just like, I'm busy answering emails. Well, you want somebody to take care of a whole department, the thing that's keeping you up at night, the thing that's blowing up your phone, the thing that hinders you from actually doing your best thing, your secret sauce, your talent.

Or I would say working on the business, really.

Yes, leadership.

The leadership, whether it's increasing the business, networking so that you've got more opportunities out there versus actually working in the business and doing the tasks, running meetings. Yeah.

And I would say the 3 criteria to like identify what those things are or that thing is, is what's taking most of your time, energy, and attention. Those are the 3 things I find to be the killer things that kind of sap everything. So, every business is different. You need to audit your business and what it takes to run your business. You know, we give the example of Giuseppe and him kind of taking over the engineering side of things. And that sapped a lot of my energy and stressed me out and blah, blah, blah.

Mm-hmm.

Here at the $100 MBA, You know, Josh is somebody who's taking care of a lot of the stuff that used to take a lot of my time and energy and didn't allow us to kind of just produce content. And then obviously, this is just the first step and you'll have other supplemental pieces that you hire. But what's that main person? What is the thing that makes your business run that you can be able to then outsource and give to somebody else?

Yeah, for us, I mean, the tech side for you and the CTO, that was a key hire. For us was, and for me on the customer support side was putting in CJ who was running our customer Because that was a massive drain of time reading support tickets, answering some.

I mean, that was training the team, training the team, auditing what's happening so that you can point out, hey, next time you do this, you know, right?

You know, you can't be doing that if you're in the ticket and actually responding, which in the very, very early days we were doing. So we appreciated like, oh, what a huge relief it was when we had someone who was capable of taking that off our plate.

Exactly. And at the end of the day, As the owner of the business, you have to start realizing, hey, I have to start orchestrating a team to do the work for me and to not only do the work but take on the responsibilities that I'm taking on. Now, it's hard to do when you're first getting traction. But as the business starts building, you have to start shifting with that mentality.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think one of the things we did was to be clear about, especially when you're letting— starting to let go, What decisions still need your involvement? And a clear example for me that comes to mind now that you're talking about this is anything to do with billing, revenue.

Money.

Money. Basically money.

Finances still came back to us. Yeah.

If it was a question that dealt with that in the early stages as we were training the team, then okay, that can come back to us and we can make that call.

And then eventually we just gave them the responsibility. CJ, who's the manager, like, hey, you make the call. They had like a budget of like, okay, You know, X amount of money that they have, you know, the ability to make a call on. So yeah. And that relieved us a lot.

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah.

So step 1, okay, find that position, find that person, find that role that will alleviate a majority of your time, energy, and attention. And then the second step, a lot of people think is to find this person and hire them. No, the first thing you need to do is document everything that you do right now that pertain to this role.

Mm-hmm.

Right? So, it's easy to hire and train this person. So, this literally means like just writing down the steps of those tasks.

Mm-hmm.

How you make decisions. What is your decision framework? One of the things I did when we were hiring Giuseppe is like we would record the meetings so that we can document how does the meeting run? How do we run a standup? How do we make sure people are responsible and they hit their targets? What happens when we don't hit a milestone?

Yeah.

How do we communicate to customer support when something is fixed and is ready for them to go back to the customer and say, hey, this is fixed now, you can enjoy this new feature. You know, all these small little steps that takes time. It takes about, I would say, a good 2 weeks.

You know what's wild though? We were doing this and we were recording all of those processes and creating, I know we're going to talk about SOPs and standard operating procedures. We were doing those manually. We're in a world now. We're in a world.

I wish we had AI back then.

I know, right? I mean, think about like how fast-tracked this process is now using tools that we love, like Granola, to record your calls and to document all of those processes. AI to translate all of those notes into a process that then you can check. Of course, we run through, we can—

But it's a huge time saver. We did this all manually.

We were doing it manually for every single process, but that was key. To get to, to have those systems in place so that you started to let go.

Yeah. And one of the things that we used to do is we used to, with a new hire, get them to document it themselves. Like, so we would run the meeting or run that process. They would document it. They would write the SOP, they write the standard operating procedure, which is basically a document in a Google Doc. And then they would show us, hey, this is what I came up with. We'd make some edits. No, do this, do that. And then They would then run the SOP, like do the thing next time and run the meeting or run the process themselves. So, so yeah, step 2 is to document everything that the role entails. What is step 3?

Step 3 is to hire for the role.

Yeah, I agree. One of the things that I want to like just really push is if you can't hire somebody who is talented, that is highly qualified, you need to find a way to afford it. Meaning you might have to cut costs. You might need to take a reduction in your own salary, right? Because this is going to increase the value of your company, which will eventually get you more revenue, more profit, and be able to, you know, reap that benefit. But the point here is, is that like, again, there's no diamonds in the rough. You need to pay for top talent. That's just how it is. And you're going to save time, money, and energy by doing this.

Yeah. And be okay with maybe the first person not working out. But also, do you remember we had a friend who told us about being happy with 80%.

Yes, Carl Taylor.

Carl Taylor. That was game changer, like a game-changing piece of advice that stuck with me. Because to your earlier point, we think that no one can do this thing that I've started, that I've been doing for X amount of time as good as I can. And that's just a mindset you've got to let go of because there's no way your business is going to grow. And so those first hires, when they do take on a task that you've been doing, I remember him saying, you just got to be happy with 80%.

Yeah, if it's 80% good, it's better than you doing it yourself because like you completely take care of that. Like imagine you have, um, you're doing 5 jobs and all 5 of them you hire for, all of them are doing 80%, but now you don't have to do that job anymore, you know? And now you're free to actually bring in more money and, and, and grow your team and be a better leader and be a better thinker. You know, 80% is good enough is kind of what he said.

Yeah. And what's wild too is oftentimes Someone will do it better than you.

Yeah, and that's why you spend. Yeah, that's why you spend money on these hires. Like when we started to adopt this philosophy, it's like, oh, it's not that I don't like managing people. I just don't like managing untalented people, people that don't have the skills.

Yeah, a lot of it might have to do with the way you've trained people as well. You've got to take that responsibility. But for sure, if if they're you know phoning it in or yeah just Taking up your time, you know, asking you the same question over and over again, you've obviously hired someone who's not autonomous, who's not willing to take initiative, really.

And we're going through these steps, like the logistics of this, like this is like the step-by-step to do this. But we're going to talk about what's beneath this and what's holding you back right now, why you're doing this in a moment. Like, why do you feel fully dependent on this business, or the business is fully dependent on you, I should say, and how to break through from this? Because there was a A mental shift we had to go through. We're gonna get into so much more, but if you're listening, if you're watching, make sure you subscribe to the podcast cuz we have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. It's an episode where I share the 5 big mistakes I've made creating and selling live events. If you ever wanna run a live event, which is probably gonna happen if you run a team because they're gonna do professional development days, parties, whatever it might be, uh, you don't wanna make these mistakes. I made every single one of 'em. So, uh, learn from my mistakes. And these are pivotal mistakes because these mistakes will either make or break your event.

Mm-hmm.

Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. So we're gonna shift into some hard truths. These are things that I wish somebody told us when we were struggling with this.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and I believe that you're in this position where you feel that the business depends on you 24/7 because of 2 things. And it's one of these 2 things. It could be both even. One is the economics of your business don't allow you to hire out, meaning that you're just not making enough profit. Whose fault is that? That's you as the founder's fault. I'm just going to give it to you straight. You need to fix the economics of your business, meaning that maybe you need to raise your prices, maybe you need to lower expenses, maybe you need to think about how you can extract more from your customers, meaning offering upsells, offering other offers inside your business, solve other problems for them. The point here is that you're just not making enough profit for you to reinvest in your business. Most successful businesses they see around you, they're making healthy margins and therefore they can hire talented people to take things off their plate because they can afford it. That's one of the reasons why this happens. The second is your ego. So, it's either your economics or your ego. And when I say ego is I lived this life of believing, I really believe this to my core that, oh, no one can do this as good as I can. Like, I tried hiring out and they just screw it up or it's just not as good as I want. It's not at the standard I'm looking for. Right? You have to ask your question. Ask the question why. Like, how did you become so good? Like, are you one of you know seven billion people in the world? No, you can find somebody else that can do what you do or can learn to do what you do or do even better. You either can't afford them, you haven't spent the time to find them or attract them, or you are kind of not really great at. teaching people how to do something. You're not good at training and onboarding them. So, your ego is probably stopping you from that. You just don't want to see somebody do better than you. I know that sounds strange, but like, this is your business, your baby. You kind of invested in it. You got to kind of graduate from this, in my opinion, and kind of feel like, okay, what's my job as a business owner? My job is to have a successful business. So, the best thing I can do is to find the best people to do this for me. Not I do it. Like, you're not trying to be self-employed here. You're trying to build an asset that works for you.

Yeah, I mean, it might be a subconscious thing too, where you just get caught up in the activities and the busyness, and you're just telling yourself as well that, oh, if I'm busy, it means I'm, you know, this is—

I'm productive.

I'm productive, and this is how it's just got to be. But it's, it's not really very smart, is it? Because It doesn't allow you to think. So when you said like your business isn't able to possibly, if you're in that trap of like, oh, my business isn't able to afford someone to help me. Well, it's probably because you're not even giving yourself the time to think. I think, do you know what I mean? Like you're constantly busy.

To evaluate.

To evaluate, to reflect, and to analyze your time, all of those things that needs a lot of thinking time. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, founders are in reactive mode. I just remembered now, that's where I got my 5:00 AM habit from. It was one of those things, one of the, you said one of the turning points was around, for me also was that waking up and reacting to notifications was the first thing I did. So I was in reactive mode. And I remember picking up The Morning Miracle, Hal Elrod. I love that book.

Hal.

Yeah, it started my 5 AM habit. But what it also started was a habit of not looking at notifications and going into that thinking mode first so that I could then be ready for the day, make better decisions. Yeah, all of that.

It gave you some relief too.

Yeah, it gave me relief, but it also set me up for the day. And I think if you're just, you know, running around— Yeah.

Yeah. And I want to get to the root. Why does this happen? It's because most of us grow up in families or in an environment where hard work is how you get paid. Like, as an employee in a company, you know, you work long hours, you work overtime, you get compensated for it. You show initiative and work harder, you get a promotion. That's how we're wired. Like, oh, if I work more, I'll get more results. That's not how it works in business. Okay. And the reason why it doesn't work in business is business doesn't exchange time for money. Business exchanges value for money. And you can create more value by leveraging other people's time, which is people that you higher. And that's a huge game changer when you start changing your mentality of understanding like, oh, like, I only have 24 hours a day. Like, I have 24 hours a day. You have 24 hours in the day. Oprah has 24 hours in the day. Whoever you want to think of, any big entrepreneur that you admire, you know, Sarah Blakely has 24 hours in a day. Like, we all have 24 hours a day. But so how is she able to be more successful and be a billionaire? Because she's not using her own time.

Right.

She's leveraging other assets, technology and labor and other people's talents creativity and ideas. And that's how you grow as an entrepreneur. And you have to shift your mentality to realizing like, oh, I can't do this all myself. I'm limited. I need to use and leverage other forms of talent and time. Yeah.

Yeah, I think one of the, probably the mistakes that we made early on, and I think one of the best advice that we can give now someone who's starting out, if they're just a, you know, a solo operator is to hire an assistant as your first hire because they're going to be able to help you audit your time. They're going to be able to document tasks so that then you can eventually start hiring.

That was our first hire. We hired Cindy, who's still on our team for 10 years, and she's moved up the ranks and now is a big part of the production of the show. But she was our virtual assistant. I mean, you know, at the time, this is like, you know, 12+ years ago or something. But like, you can hire somebody even part-time for $500 a month Mm-hmm. You know, in, in the Philippines, for example, uh, that's quite qualified, that can take off your plate, this time-intensive task, or what Dan Martell calls $10 tasks. $10 tasks. You know, one great book you could read is called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. He talks about like, how do you outsource the low-value tasks in your business and your life?

Mm-hmm.

So that you can free yourself up. So we, we, we forget that like, I could spend an hour of time doing something that maybe will save me $10 or be worth $10. I can also use that hour of time to make $100,000. Like, it's the same hour.

Yeah.

So, you know, you can outsource that 1 hour to somebody else to do all the smaller tasks. So, Gail, to wrap up and to give my advice to anybody who's listening, one of the things you need to think about is, as an entrepreneur, you can't equate hard work or working more to success. You need to start thinking, how can I be replaceable? Like, we feel like, I don't wanna, you know, be indispensable. But that's your job as an entrepreneur, is to actually have a business where you're not needed, where the money— the business is growing and you're making money month over month and you are not required. You can go and have a holiday. You can go write a book. You can go and explore some new hobbies and have people run your business for you. That's the dream, really. That's really what you're trying to do. That's what you're working towards. And there's levels to get to that dream. So you should be working through those levels. Thinking about, hey, how can I be replaceable? How could I be replaced? And that just means I need to hire people that are highly talented, that can do all the little responsibilities that I'm doing right now that are on my plate for me so that my business continues to grow without me. Do you agree, Nicole?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it took me probably longer than anyone else to realize that there was a different way of operating. I hope this episode helps because it is possible. It's different to be thinking about your business. That's okay. As a business owner, you will be thinking about your business probably a lot more than you want to, but that's okay. That's different than I'm constantly being needed. And I think all the things that we did, that we shared today, you're able to remove yourself from the business so that you think more.

And a really good exercise is just like forget about finances, forget about what you can afford, is just to write down on a piece of paper like, What would I have to do to remove myself from this business? What would have to be true? Who would I have to hire? What systems have to be in place? What would that look like? Just like dream a little bit, right, to figure out what that business would look like and then work backwards. Well, how much is that going to cost? OK, so that means how much would I need to make in profit so that I can actually make these hires? OK, maybe I can create some milestones in my business where it's like maybe I need, you know, $500,000 to make this happen in profit every single year. Okay, so let's move some milestones. Let's go $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 so that you're making hires as you grow. And you start to see it's possible, but you have to first just imagine a world that's different than what's currently happening and then work backwards from there. Gail, thanks so much for asking today's Q&A Wednesday's question. If you got a question you want to ask, go ahead and submit it over at 100mba.net/q. If you want to continue learning, you should scroll back in whatever app you're using— Apple, Spotify— YouTube. We recently published an episode called How to Choose Which Business to Start. If you are starting a whole new business and you're wondering which business I should start, given my experience, my skills, the market, whatever, that episode's for you. Go ahead and check it out. Thanks so much for being part of today's Q&A Wednesday. We'll be back next Wednesday to answer another question.

Bye.