What to do when your business can’t run without you

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not just from working too hard, but from doing that and then realising you’ve been working on all the wrong things. Answering emails that someone else could handle. Updating spreadsheets instead of serving clients. If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking my business can’t run without me – half in pride and half in dread – that feeling is exactly what this is about. You’re the one who knows how everything works – and that’s precisely the problem.

Because here’s the thing – not only is it burning you out, it’s creating a risk for the business as well. If everything comes through you, then you’re a single point of failure. If you’re not available, everything stops. That’s ok for an out-of-town site visit or a cheeky day off, but longer than that – it has the potential to be seriously damaging. Put bluntly, your business can’t run without you. And a business that can’t run without you isn’t really an asset, it’s a liability with your name on it.

Getting out of the day-to-day of your business

If this is you, you need to get out of the day-to-day of your business, and fast!

Becoming less essential to the day-to-day running of your business isn’t about stepping back. It’s about stepping up – into the high-value work only you can do. It’s about stopping doing the things that aren’t a good use of your time, and focusing instead on where your time can make the biggest impact. It’s an essential part of the growth journey.

Here are some thoughts & some simple steps to help you make that change:

Step One: Diagnose your Time-Sucks

Most business owners have a rough sense of what drains their week, but rarely the full picture. Before you change anything, spend a couple of weeks tracking where you’re spending your time. A list in a notebook as you go through the day, a simple spreadsheet, or even a time-tracking app like Toggl or Clockify. (Or you might already have one in another app, for example, I use the timetracking tool within my accounting software)

But however you do it, make sure you’re honest about where your time actually goes, not just how you plan to spend it.

As you review the results, look for patterns across these four areas:

The last box is the critical one. When strategic time is consistently squeezed to the bottom of the week, that’s when you’re working in the business rather than on it. And when a business owner is only ever in the business, their business faces the very real risk of stagnating, running out work and being over-taken by their competitors.

Get that balance right and you create the space you need not only to breathe, but also to focus, plan and grow. The goal of everything that follows is to protect and grow that space.

Step Two: Protect Your Space

Once you’ve seen where your time goes, get clear on what you should keep. What are the things you need to keep – and how do you manage the rest.

The first question is – what genuinely needs you to be involved? My guess right now is that you’re thinking – pretty much everything needs me, which is just another way of saying the business can’t run without you. The point of this step is to start shrinking that list.

The answer to what really needs you will be different for every business. For some, it will be client relationships, for others, high level sales conversations or perhaps service design or areas of specialist delivery. Work out what it is for your business – and make that the core of your role. Everything else is then a candidate to move off your plate – now or later.

Having done that, the second question is – who else could do those tasks instead of you?

For young businesses, this can feel like a really tough – almost impossible – question. How to afford the help, when sales aren’t great, revenue is tight and fear is all around. The real question, however, isn’t whether the cash is there (although clearly that’s important), it’s what happens if you don’t spend it – what chances do you miss, what impact does it have: in short, what’s the opportunity cost of NOT spending!

The good news is – you don’t need to hire a team overnight. A few well-chosen contractors can transform how your business runs.

For example:

• A Virtual Assistant can take diary & inbox management, invoicing & follow up, client on-boarding paperwork & CRM upkeep off your plate for a capped number of hours per month. Good VAs can also often help in the research and lead generation space.
• A Social Media Assistant can create & schedule posts for you, manage your Social Media accounts and support newsletter production & email marketing activities.
• An outsourced bookkeeper can keep your financial paperwork, monthly accounts and payroll admin in order so that you can use your numbers, not worry about updating them
• A short term commission to an AI consultant can identify areas ripe for automation, making things run not just without your input but probably more smoothly as well!

The beauty of all these spends is that as well as freeing you up for the important tasks in your business, they’re also investments in their own right – they keep your clients happy through streamlined communications, they keep your cash flow moving through slicker invoicing and credit control, they increase your market position through consistent  visibility and they simplify processes to reduce the drag on everyone’s time. In other words, well directed, they should start paying for themselves.

As you grow, you still don’t need to get into the team hiring space – fractional specialists like a Marketing Specialist, an IT advisor or a CFO  can take on entire functions for you without the cost (and risk ) of a full-time hire.

Step Two and a Half: Keep Space for the Joy

All the textbooks will tell you a business owner should only focus on the strategic and specialist work, and delegate or outsource everything else. In an textbook world, yes. But let’s face it, most of us started businesses because there was something we loved doing and sometimes that thing isn’t in the strategic or specialist category.

I’m a firm believer in Ivan Misner’s philosophy of “working in your flame, not your wax” – making sure that you have parts of your work that genuinely excite you in your daily/weekly schedule, otherwise it risks becoming a drag and you end up resenting rather than loving your business.

So, by all means, if creating the most beautiful spreadsheet is a joy and a pleasure, keep hold of that task. Just doing it knowingly and through choice, and with the understanding of what you’re NOT doing instead. Most importantly, time-box it so that it doesn’t eat into the other important things you need to do.

Step Three: Task Effectively

Outsourcing fails when the handover is unclear. Before you pass anything to someone else, create what you need to make it “handoff ready”: a one-page brief, a simple checklist, or even a short screen recording walking through the task. It might take an hour to create but it will save weeks of back-and-forth.

Be really clear – with yourself as well as with your contractors – not just what the task is, but what you need it to achieve for you. This can be a great check for yourself about the wisdom of spending and possibly even of the task itself – if it’s not generating a return on investment of some description, why are you doing or paying for it?

I know there are some tasks we just have to do – particularly those regulatory and compliance ones – but even they have an ROI, without them we can’t stay in business or we risk penalties & fines for non-compliance.

Whatever the return, be clear what it is – and spend at least some of your freed up time making sure it materialises. Your role switches from doing the work to specifying it, and then making sure it happens.

[For anyone wanting to know more about delegating and tasking effectively, check out the guide in our Resource Library and this Blog post]

Step Four: Use Your Freed up Time Wisely

Freeing up time is half the equation, the other half is knowing what to do with it. Some of that will be obvious – the ‘only you’ tasks you identified in Step one – others maybe less so.

Don’t worry about that too much to begin with. Many business owners find that once the operational noise and constant hamster wheel quietens down, the bigger strategic, ‘on the business’ questions become not only obvious, but impossible to ignore.

Things like:

• What opportunities aren’t we taking that we should?
• Where is the market going and are we going with it?
• Have I got the right people around me to help me get where I want to go?
• Should I be doing more of the same or something different?
• Where are our risks and what are we doing about them?

Enjoy being able to think about your business, not just about the tasks you need to do. Start noticing what’s going on inside the business and outside it. Remember why you started on this journey to begin with and what it’s like to be inspired again. The chances are it hasn’t felt that way for a long time!

Then you can start doing the ‘strategy’ bit – working out if what got you here will get you to the next milestone and if not, what you need to adjust. Use the same ROI test for your own activities that you use for outsourced ones. Be clear about the return you’re looking for, and prioritise the things that are going to deliver it.

What Success Looks Like:

In 3 – 6 months, if you’re rigorous about protecting your space, keeping things off your plate that don’t need to be there, and tasking effectively, you should find yourself spending considerably less time keeping the wheels on and much more time taking your business in the direction you want.

You’ll be using your freed up time to think creatively – develop new offers, build strategic relationships and make decisions that move the business forward in a safe, competitive and consistent way.

In short, you’ll have stopped thinking my business can’t run without me – and most importantly of all, you’ll be proud of it!

That’s what it means to be working on the business, not just in it.

Know you need to change but not sure where to start?

That’s exactly the work we do with clients – helping business owners move from reactive to intentional, be clear about the questions they need to answer in their business, and build a business that works for them rather than the other way around!

Get in touch for a chat about how we can help – or just dive in and book a Strategy Review session to work out a plan for your business.