Sloan Creative

Michael Gerber in his wildly popular book, the E-Myth Revisited, gets one thing exactly right. E-Myth Revisited

Every small business owner must walk a fine line between working in their business versus on it.

Why own a business with all of its headaches if all it does is give you a job and a boss who’s not very nice to you?

Working in our businesses is quite natural because we’re good at providing the products and services that make our businesses successful. But, working in your business too much can destroy its value.

The problem
Someday, we will no longer be able to lead our businesses. At some point, our health or motivation will fail.

I knew my moment had arrived when, after installing a new computer systems before New Year’s Y2K, I never thought of my business once while I was on vacation for three weeks in Africa over the millennium. I have 35 employees running around in orange county and I never gave it a second thought. Six months later I had sold the business profitably and was on to my next venture. I was 36 years old and burned out.

A happy outcome
Luckily, I had been working for years to maximize the value of my business as an asset. I had worked hard to make myself a fifth wheel to the daily operations. The happy way that I drove this process was by simply leaving for a month every February and going to Europe. This forced me to develop my staff and systems to support them. Once I decided to sell, the transition was easy because I was unimportant to the operations.

After the fact, the one thing I regretted was not focusing even more on the asset that I ended up selling, which in my industry and situation was simply sales volume.

Since 2000, I’ve moved on from two other businesses. Of course, I’ve learned a few lessons along the way.

Free samples
If you’d like to discuss changing your daily life and maximizing the value of your business by working on it, rather than in its everyday, please contact me to set up free half-hour sample session.