Running a business, particularly in the days leading up to your first 7 figure years, requires wearing many hats. Some fit. Some don’t.
No matter how well you do them, you need to perform all the roles typically seen in a successful business.
In the early days you handle sales, marketing, operations, customer service, program delivery, accounting, HR and anything else that comes up.
“Delegating tasks creates doers. Delegating authority creates leaders.”
You likely set all of your systems up yourself, using your email address and learning what you needed to know to get your business up and running.
You had a hand in all parts of your business. You knew every system. You were aware of every complaint. You had your hands on everything.
And that’s how you knew what was working, what wasn’t, and what could be improved.
You built your systems, your SOPs, your business.
Industry statistics say that 70% of people who serve in professional leadership roles are uncomfortable handing over responsibilities to subordinates.
Now that you have achieved a certain level of success in your business you’ve likely added people to your team.
So now the question becomes how much do you still need to know? How many places do you still need to keep your fingers on the pulse of your business? How do you let go of the reins and still make sure you don’t lose touch with what’s happening.
This is a common challenge for business owners as they begin to grow beyond being a one person show and start adding a team, growing and scaling beyond the point where only one person can manage everything.
How do you stay on top of things, make sure your team is on top of things, and still remove yourself from the day to day drudgery that pulls your attention and, most importantly, energy from the areas of your business that need you operating at your best?
Here are some rules of thumb that we have seen be successful for businesses as they scale, both from mid 6 figures to 7, and from low to mid or even high 7 figures.
Some of these may seem nuanced, barely noticeable, but I assure you, they are lessons learned, often painfully, over and over again.
“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all themself or get all the credit.”
Software Notifications
The regular administrative notifications that various systems send out are exactly the types of notifications you do not need to get. And in fact, you shouldn’t get.
Daily notifications about connections becoming disconnected, zaps not firing, integrations not working are not only better sent to your team, it is far more efficient to have your team get and respond to these notifications.
Unless, of course, you are the one who will be implementing the fix you are not the one who should get those notifications.
Send them to your team. Let them deal with the “little” annoyances that come up during the day to day operations of running a company.
While we’re on the topic, uptime alerts and daily speed/performance reports should not go to you either.
Why not? How else will you know what’s happening if you don’t get the alerts?
All of these services also have weekly and monthly reporting that shows your uptime and performance. By looking at those reports rather than getting all of the alerts you are better able to manage and make decisions from a 5,000 foot view when you are not being inundated with the daily notifications that all businesses must deal with.
So, stop the daily notifications and updates and instead switch to weekly or monthly reports. This allows you to make decisions intentionally from a strategic position rather than living in react mode.
According to Pareto’s Principle, of all the tasks you do only about 20% product results.
Customer Support
While the early days may require your involvement in all customer support it is important that you remove yourself from that position as soon as possible.
Customer support inquiries come in all shapes and sizes. They can be encouraging, which your team should be encouraged to share in full, or discouraging, which your team should be trained to sort through and share summaries as needed.
They can be letting you know about tech that is not working. Or refund requests. Or content complaints.
The list of things people feel a need to bring to your attention is literally endless.
Add to that the myriad of channels people can use to inject themselves into your day and you could be spending all your time handling those complaints.
Making these changes will require both trust and effort from you. You will need to trust that your team will handle it (don’t worry, we’ll set up checks and balances to make sure of it) and you will need to redirect anyone who reaches out directly to you to send the information to your team.
You will need to refrain from replying to well meaning customers or prospects with anything other than a simple reply to reach out to your team and they will handle it, and CC your support team.
That’s it. But that’s on you. No one can do that for you. No one can force you to let go or to not reply with anything of consequence.
That’s on you.
At System Chicks we strongly encourage you to set up reports so you don’t lose track of anything and you can keep track of how your team is managing things. We do this for our clients and teach our members to do this early in their system set up.
Your team can help you set up weekly reports to start, and once your trust and confidence grow you can move to monthly reports.
I promise, once you make those shifts you will be amazed at how much more time, attention and energy available to run your business from a position of intentional strategy rather than reactionary energy.
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.”
Action Steps
- Choose who on your team will get the daily notifications and updates that come from your software platforms, website monitoring service, etc
- Talk to that team member, let them know what you’re doing, and what your expectations are for them
- Set up weekly reporting from the services and from your team so you don’t lose track of what’s going on, and make a task or appt to review them weekly
- Change the notification settings
- Enjoy the breathing room
