How well would your restoration business operate if you stepped away from it? Would it keep running smoothly, without missing a beat? Or would it crumble from within?
For some restoration business owners, the answer is the latter – without them at the helm day in and day out, the business itself would falter and possibly fail.
That’s not a good place to be. It means you work for your business. It means you have a job. The business doesn’t work for you. Is that a problem, though? For some, that’s just fine. They enjoy being the heart and soul of the company and want nothing more from life than to keep on doing what they’re doing.
That’s probably not you, though.
You have bigger dreams. Maybe it’s adding new service lines, more people or more locations. Or perhaps it’s the chance to finally travel (or sleep!) while your restoration business earns money. It could be that you want to create a true lifestyle of freedom and gain genuine control over your business, rather than the other way around!
If that sounds familiar, then you must extract yourself from the business. Not sure how to do that? Here are some vital tips.
Know What You Want
The first tip is perhaps the most critical. Know what you want. Do you want to be the lynchpin of the business, the hub without which it falls apart? If that’s your goal, then you can stop reading right now.
Still here? Good.
What life do you want to live? Do you want the freedom to travel? The chance to spend more time with your kids while they’re young? Time and opportunity to create an even better business?
Know what you want. When you identify your true goals, you’re able to begin planning and prioritizing correctly and can then implement systems in your restoration business that allow you to step away without the fear of losing control.
Be Replaceable
This tip seems to fly in the face of most career-related advice out there. Jobseekers are often urged to make themselves indispensable, irreplaceable. However, if that’s the case, then you can’t step away.
You’ll never be able to extract yourself from your business if you’re irreplaceable.
The solution? Be redundant. Be replaceable. Train other people to do what you do, give them the tools they need to be successful. It’s really that simple. Empower your team to handle daily functions so that you don’t need to be involved in the nitty-gritty.
Create Systems
Take a look at any thriving business and you’ll see something familiar. They’re not organized around individuals.
It’s not the individual, but the functions that the individual performs, that truly matters.
Perhaps the single most important way to extract yourself from your restoration business is this: create systems around the critical functions in your business. Systems can be improved and refined. Systems connect the various parts of the business, creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
What kind of systems, though? In the water damage restoration industry, some of the systems and subsystems include the HR system, dispatching, marketing, customer service, and job estimating.
Stepping Away: Automating Business Success
Unsure how to create systems and apply them within your restoration company? Check out our free whitepaper, “Making My Restoration Business Work Without Me”. We’ll explore critical insights, tips, and tricks on building systems into your company while empowering your employees to do what they do best. All while helping you step away, of course.