If you own a business or want to build one, it’s important that you build a system for your business. Don’t just run your business as it is, by using whatever technical skills you have, but try build a system around your business.
Why? Because by building a system, your business will be independent of you. It will take time to build the system and even more time to make it run smoothly, but once it does you are free to pursue other interests in your life. You are no longer required to always be present for your business to run.
Just think about it. If you don’t have a system for your business, then your business is actually just a job. It’s something that you can’t leave. Even worse, you might need to always be there which means that it’s even worse than normal job since you can’t take a leave. That’s why it’s essential that you build a system around your business.
To do that, the book The E-Myth Revisited has a lot of great tips. In essence, you need to organize your business around functions instead of around personalities. Do this from day one even if the only person in your business is you. When you think this way from the beginning, it will be easier to recruit and empower new people since you just place them inside the system you’ve built.
The difficult part is building the system. You need to put a lot of thoughts here. In this perspective, the main product of your business is the system rather than the commodity that your customer consumes. This is a different paradigm that what most business owners have and it does take a lot of effort on your part. But it will pay off big time.