How to Work Less in Your Business (and get away from the day to day operations)

This is a critical question for you: How much are you personally needed every day in your business?  How much is reliant on you, your decisions, and your experience?
 
Are you so important that it keeps you from taking a few days off or take a holiday and completely disconnect?
 
In this week’s video I share a practical strategy for HOW to become less important in your day-to-day operations, so you can have more time off, as well as focus on leading the strategic growth of your enterprise.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey everybody, Dan Holstein here helping your business take flight.

Question for you: 0:03

Would you like to have more time away from your business for family and friends and fun and hobbies and things like that while your business continues to grow when you're not there? If so, stick around for this week's video, because I want to share with you a strategy to take off pretty much as much time as you'd like while your business continues to prosper. So before I get to the little strategy of how to take off as much time as you would like, let's first talk about why most business owners don't take off as much time as they would like or deserve. Well, the number one reason is they're too important. And what I mean by that is they're too important to the business. Too much relies on them. Whether it's for problem solving or intellectual property or technical skills, too much relies on the business owner and they feel like they have to be there. And I don't mean just sole proprietors. I mean, multimillion dollar enterprises that I encounter where the business owner can't get away for a day or a week, and hasn't had a holiday in three years. This happens. Maybe that's your situation right now. You haven't had a holiday in a really long time. So, we have to get over the fact that we don't need to be that important. The more important we are to the business, the less value we can actually bring. We need to make ourselves less and less important over time. And how do we do that? Well, here's the little strategy. Book an afternoon off. Just starts with an afternoon off. Take that afternoon off, leave at 12, turn off your phone, don't look at your email, just stay disengaged from the business. That might be tough depending what you've got going on that week, but this is what you need to do. Take just a few hours of that afternoon off. The next morning you come in, analyze what happened."What were the decisions that needed to be made that only I could have made? What were the problems that happened that only I could have solved? What were the functions that needed execution only I do?" And now you've got a list of things that you can develop processes around, systems and training and perhaps even hiring somebody to take on some of those responsibilities. So that's the process. Take a bit of time off and then document what needed to happen while you weren't there. The next thing is take a day off. And again, we're going to iterate through what were the decisions that only you could have made? What were the problems that only you could have solved? What's the execution that only you could have done? And again, we're going to document this, we're going to develop processes and systems and train your team so that you become less important. So your team becomes better at what they do and your business becomes stronger because the business isn't so reliant upon you. And then book yourself a week off. And then when I say off, I mean disconnected, right? Off the grid, unavailable. Not just, "Call me if you have a problem." I mean, you're unavailable. And that might seem a little bit scary, but if you continue to do this process of taking a bit of time off, document what goes wrong or what you were needed for while you were away, and train somebody or develop processes and systems, pretty soon, maybe over a few months to a year, you're not going to be that important to the business anymore. The business is going to be stronger in terms of structure and stronger in terms of team, which means it can continue to grow while you're not there. Now, how amazing is that? Having a business that can grow without you being there because you're less important? Well, it actually makes you more important because when you do show up for the business, you've got the time and mindset to think more strategically on those big picture initiatives that are going to help the enterprise move forward and grow and add value to your customers, yourself and your team and those that you serve. So by making yourself less important to the day-to-day tactical, you make yourself available for the high level, really important strategic things in the business. So I hope this is a helpful tip. I know everyone's in a different situation with their business. If you're thinking yourself,"Hey, I can't possibly do what you just said." Let's have a chat. I can help strategize with you around how to get more time away from your business based on your unique business situation. So, if we're not connected, please connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're seeing this on YouTube, hit subscribe, hit the notification bell so you can get upcoming content. And I wish you a happy week and book that afternoon off. Catch you next time.