Can Your Business Run Without You?

If you are a business owner or a business owner to be, let's examine this scenario.

Like other people, you are so excited when you first started your own business. But after a few months, you come to realize that you work longer hours than what you expected...and you even have to work on weekends!

You feel more exhausted than you used to be and you start to have doubts whether you should start your own business in the first place.

You are suffering from, what Michael Gerber says, entrepreneur seizure. Michael says that most small business owners were used to be "technicians" before starting their own business. For example, if you are good at baking, naturally you'll open a bakery shop.

When you, the technician, become business owner, you bring in the details of a technician to your business. Technicians look at things in a very detail manner. That explains why you end up doing everything yourself.

You want to make sure that you give the best service to your customers. You can't or you don't want to depend on other people to deliver the work for you. You probably don't even trust your own staff.

That's why, until one fine day, you ask yourself why you are so tired.

Under these circumstances, more often than not, your business cannot run without you. You must be there in order for your business to run. You don't have a single chance to walk away from your business, let say to go for a vacation.

Do you want to create a business that ties you up and there is no freedom for you at all? The answer is definitely a big no.

To overcome this problem, learn from the highly successful McDonald's. When you go to McDonald's, you don't meet the owner there. You only see a bunch of part time workers who mostly are high school students.

McDonald's is in every corner of the world. But the owner is not there!

Amazing.

Did it come to your mind that why McDonald's is so much successful than your neighborhood burger stand even though it's run by high school students and without the owner around?

Because McDonald's has designed an effective and efficient burger marketing and distribution system. A system that is so simple that even a high school student can follow.

Back to your business, you can emulate the success of McDonald's to run your business without your presence as a business owner...with the mind that you want to franchise your business.

That is how you should look at your business and that is how you should run your business.

Think about it, do you want your business to be the next McDonald's or just a burger stand along the roadside?

If you want your business to be the next McDonald's, you must learn how to run the business without you. Only by doing this, you can make a big fortune from your business with the power of leveraging.

Abel Cheng offers small and medium enterprises exclusive global profits insider tips in his free publication, Abel Cheng's Business Diary. To officiate a bi-weekly subscription, please go to http://www.abelcheng.com/diary.html

Globe and Mail

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