How To Build A Business That Runs Itself

There are two types of business owners – those who work for their businesses and the others whose businesses work for them.

On the surface, they all run and own businesses, but you know you work for your business when you spend long hours every day giving orders, supervising operations, attending meetings, etc.

You rarely have any spare time for yourself or your family, you never take breaks or go on holidays, and when you get sick, your business operations collapse.

On the other hand, your business work for you if your business can run itself without you.

It is possible to take breaks from the business for months. You don’t need to check your emails every 30 minutes. You can spend more time with your family or think big picture while staying on top of business operations.
The type of business owner you choose to be (whether consciously or unconsciously) depends on you.

But if you work for your business when you actually want to build a business that works for you, here is how you build your business to run itself:

1. Set The Right Foundation

The first step to building a business that runs itself is to set up a firm foundation.

Defining your goals for the business is essential to a firm foundation.

Setting up SMART goals and communicating them is essential to aligning your team’s efforts and ensuring that every member of your staff understands the vision and goals of the business, both in the short and long term.

S. M. A. R. T goals are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-based.

But it is not enough to just set goals. You also must clearly communicate the role your employees play in achieving those goals. From your cleaners to your marketing staff.

Another aspect of the business foundation you need to define is your values.

Your core values, whatever they are, are essential to guide your employees to make the right decisions for your business even in your absence.

But a core aspect that must not be ignored is the culture in which your small business operates.

Is your business the type that encourages and rewards employees for taking initiative? Does it make it easy for your employees to take risks and make mistakes within your set values and to achieve your set goals?

Without setting the right foundation for your business to succeed on its own, your business would never succeed in running itself.

2. Replace Yourself

For some business owners, being involved in every aspect of running their business is their goal.

But for those who want to build businesses that run themselves, who want true freedom, then making sure that you’re replaceable is a must.

Because the true measure of a self-running business is its ability to run without you – the business owner.

To help you do that and still keep your business running, you have to:

• Hire and train the right employees, so they are competent to handle business operations without running to you every time for directions.
• You can gradually remove yourself from your business by delegating more tasks, core activities you perform as a business owner, to your employees.
• Documenting processes and creating systems would make it easier for your staff to handle key operations without you, so create detailed documentation of the tools, steps and required outcomes for each operation in your business.
• A good hack for easing yourself from your business is to track where you are currently spending time in your business and take steps to delegate and outsource those tasks where you can.

3. Systemise Your Operations

No business just runs itself.

It needs to rely on systems to operate.

A business system is a documented procedure that outlines how to perform a task in your business to achieve your business goals.

By systemising your operations, you make your knowledge, skills and expertise easily repeatable and scaled by your employees even when you are long gone.

A system can be as simple as a recipe or a checklist that anyone can easily read through and be able to repeat a task to get the same results you would get as a business owner.

But you need more than one system to build a business that runs itself.

So, start out by identifying the core functions that determine your business’s success and create systems so the business can perform them without you.

This is also key if you want to build legacy businesses that span generations like Coca-cola and the likes.

4. Measure Your Performance

No matter how much you want your business to run itself, you still want to track its performance.

To help do that, it’s important that you create a system that helps you track key metrics, so you stay on top of things.

Setting up key performances indices that measure growth, employee contributions, customer acquisition and retention, and other indices is important.

You can set up a dashboard for live real-time tracking or simply use frequent reports to stay on track.

By creating weekly or monthly reports or dashboards, you get to manage and measure how your business is doing without being there.

Now that you know how to create a business that runs itself, what is stopping you from taking action?

Photo by Alena Darmel