The evolutions of freedom from your business
Freedom of time and money. That is what most of us are really aiming for as we go down the route of entrepreneurship.
Some people may care more about time; others more about money. But in the end, these are two of the biggest aspects of freedom that your business can bring you.
Yet, freedom from your business doesn't happen overnight. Instead, it happens in a series of evolutions.
In this article, I will walk you through what I see as the key evolutions of freedom for an agency or consulting business, as well as give you checkpoints along the way.
The evolutions of a service-based business
From what I have seen, there are a handful of stages of evolution you will go through as an entrepreneur building your business.
You do the work.
Team members do the work, but you still oversee the service.
The service can be delivered without you.
The company can operate without you.
The service can be sold without you.
The service can be marketed without you.
Stage 5 is currently the area that I am with Lead Cookie. While Lead Cookie has clearly demonstrated an ability to sell and run 100% without me, I have found that the marketing is still dependent on me at this point.
Stage 3 is where I am at with Content Allies. At this moment, I am still selling the service and operating many of the core business functions.
Stage 1) You do the work.
This is the stage of the freelancer or solo consultant. This is the stage where you do everything.
This isn't a bad thing. For most consultants, this is the business model they will be in forever. The business model of consulting is ultimately based on you charging for your expertise.
But if you are striving to build a business that runs without you, you can't stay at this stage forever. At some point, you need to evolve to the next stage.
Stage 2) Team members do the work, but you oversee the service.
Consider this an evolution from "doer" to manager. Instead of you doing all of the work yourself, you start to hire team members or contractors to help you with implementation.
At this point, others are doing the hands-on work, but you are still largely involved and overseeing all of the moving pieces. This frees up a lot of your time and gives you leverage to grow, but ultimately, it's still a lot of work on your plate and everything bottlenecks at you.
Stage 3) The service can be delivered without you.
The next stage is when the service can be fully delivered to customers without you. At this stage, you most likely have a project manager or account manager in place who is able to handle all of the bigger-picture moving pieces. They wrangle any of the contractors and handle all communication with customers after the sale has been made.
This stage is a huge milestone to reach because it is the first time that you can really step back and take a vacation from your business.
For many entrepreneurs, this can take months, or even years, to get to... And some never reach it at all.
And, while at this stage, your business can't grow without you, it can run customers without you.
At this point, you are now able to go and take a 1-2 week vacation and not have anything major bottleneck at you while you are out.
When you hit this stage, this is where you really begin to experience the first taste of freedom.
Stage 4) The company operates without you.
Stage 3 & 4 are kind of fuzzy in terms of timeline, as these may happen out of order or kind of mushed together.
When I say "operate," I am speaking of the back office work such as:
Bookkeeping
Payroll
Accounts receivable
Internal systems
Etc.
All of these small back office items may not seem like much, but they are a big leap toward freedom. After all, it's hard to take a vacation if no one is around to invoice and handle billing with customers when you aren't around.
Getting these back office pieces of your business in place is not fun, but it's a huge piece of freedom from monotonous work, and once again allows your company to run without you.
Step 5) The service can be sold without you.
The next massive step to freedom is having someone else sell the service. This step is possibly the biggest freedom creation jump you can make, but it's a risky and scary one.
In past articles, I have written about the mistakes I made when hiring a salesperson, as well as how I successfully hired and handed off sales at Lead Cookie.
This step is challenging and risky, but it is key to your freedom.
Once you hand off sales, the company doesn't just run without you... it can grow without you.
At this point, you have handed off operations, service delivery, and sales.
That leaves you with one core function... marketing.
While marketing is obviously a challenge, it is amazing because marketing is a very high-leverage time activity. Also, a majority of marketing activities can be done asynchronously. That means you don't have to show up on sales calls with prospects but, instead, can work on your own time and schedule.
At this stage, you can take a vacation for weeks at a time. You can cut your work hours down to 3-4 hours per week if you want. That is all possible.
But keep your eye on those leads...
Marketing is one of those things that shows results months after you put in the work. It's tempting to kick back at this stage and do nothing, but recognize that marketing is something you have to keep doing on a regular basis.
Step 6) The company can market without you.
To be honest, I haven't quite hit this stage with Lead Cookie or Content Allies yet. My biggest value creation to both companies is my ability to market and drive leads.
But, as I mentioned, for all of the reasons above, this is a great stage to be at due to the time freedom and flexibility it brings you.
Moving to a point where the company can market without you will require significant growth. There are very few small businesses that I see successfully hire a marketing director. The reason is that marketing is hard...
Even as entrepreneurs, we struggle with it. So, if you can find someone who can think strategically enough to market your business... well, they are probably going to be really expensive.
What is not expensive is to hire people to operate marketing systems that you design and build.
So, instead of hiring a "marketing strategist," you come up with the strategy and then hire someone to implement that strategy. That's way cheaper.
And so, at this stage, your journey will most likely look like acting as the marketing strategist, and hiring teams to help you implement your plans.
That is, until you reach the holy grail of hiring a head of marketing... but to that... well, I'll write more when I reach that stage.
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Evolution takes time
While it's easy to want freedom from your business quickly, the reality is that it takes time. To build the systems that evolve you through any one of these stages, it could take 3-6 months once you are ready.
And, to hit many of these stages, you will need to hit a certain level of financial prosperity before you can even afford to hire the people to help you make these stages a reality.
So be patient. Set a milestone ahead of you, and work toward it.
You won't free yourself from your business in the next 90 days. But in the next 1-2 years, you will be amazed at what is possible.