What does it take to free up your time as a founder of a growing company?
Especially when you are welcoming many more clients..
Hiring more people to support your growth?
You want to onboard and serve new clients seamlessly and make them happy with your service.
You want to hire, onboard, train and manage your growing team.
Then ensure they have everything they need to run your business WITHOUT YOU.
What do you need to make this happen?
I am going to share with you 3 key ways you can free up your time during growth.
And do so to not only better manage your current growth but also position yourself to profitably grow.
I’ve identified these 3 areas in the past 10 years of helping busy founders of growing companies manage their businesses during growth.
These 3 ways can help you create more freedom inside your business even when you are serving more clients and hiring more people.
I am thrilled to share them with you in this post.
But first things first, in case we haven’t met yet, I am Lora Jackson and I am a total Process Nerd.
I help founders of growing companies free up time with optimized operating systems and teams so they can profitably scale.
Most busy founders of growing companies think they need another software tool that will fix how they manage workflows, projects and people.
The tool will automate everything and suddenly this will bring more accountability, clarity and simplicity in their business.
Things will start running smoothly in the company.
The problem with this thinking is that you confuse what truly creates freedom inside your business.
You focus on tactical tool solutions that provide instant gratification and don't create long-term leverage.
This is why I am sharing the 3 ways to create long-term leverage in your business so you can step away from daily management to focus on more growth.
So what creates freedom inside your business?
It’s removing yourself as the business owner from low value work that doesn’t allow you to focus on more growth.
And doing so without your business collapsing, right…
First, every service business regardless of the service it provides goes through the same CORE business process:
- You attract your clients (that’s your marketing process)
- You enroll them to work with you (that’s your sales process)
- You deliver your service to them (that’s your client delivery process)
- Then you offboard them or do repeat work
- You hire and manage a team to run these processes for you (your Hiring and project management process)
- You manage your financials (your financial process)
That’s it in a nutshell.
Regardless of how you do any of these processes in your business, your business goes through these phases, right?
So what does it take to run these processes seamlessly?
It’s not a software tool that you can just plug in and it runs all your business systems for you.
While tools are super helpful, they are a tiny piece of running a business with leverage.
The key to focus on these common functions in your business is your PROCESS.
From how you do your marketing and sales, to how you deliver your service to your clients without being strapped on time to welcome more clients.
From how you hire, onboard, train and manage your team without managing projects or worse, micromanaging people.
None of that gives you freedom inside your business.
It’s how things are set up in your business - it’s your PROCESSES.
What about them though?
An effective process that brings the outcome you want in your business is one that has:
- Clarity
- Simplicity
- Is documented
- In some cases, automated
In other words, a process that’s OPTIMIZED.
And that’s what YOU and your team want.
Imagine welcoming many more clients in your business and onboarding them inconsistently.
You'd create frustrations, bad first impressions, angry clients.
That won’t help you grow more and serve more clients.
Imagine hiring more people and doing it by shooting from the hip.
You will be hiring people that are not a good fit for your company.
Or finding the right people but not onboarding and training them well to only frustrate them and create a high turnover.
If your client delivery process is broken, you won’t attract and delight more clients.
If your hiring process is broken, you won’t be able to build a self-managed team of top performers.
And that leads me to the second key area I’d like to discuss beyond PROCESS: PEOPLE
If you want to create freedom inside your business, you need to build a self-managed team of top performers. People who are excited to run your business systems FOR YOU.
But if your hiring strategy and process is shooting from the hip, you won’t attract the right people at the right time.
Even if you are lucky to find the right people, if you don’t have a consistent way to welcome and onboard them, how can you create a self-managed team to run your business FOR YOU?
How can you create team accountability?
Switching from Trello to Asana won’t create that accountability within your team.
Tools don’t create that feeling among your team members that they are appreciated.
That they are awarded to show up daily to run your company FOR YOU.
Obviously you will need to cultivate a supportive, uplifting environment for them.
And that leads me to the third key area - PHILOSOPHY.
What I mean by that is your business philosophy or in other words, your culture, your values.
Listen, you can have the best systems and processes and let’s say you do and that’s not the issue.
Then you can have the best people to support you in your business, and let’s say that is the case.
But if your company culture is off, that will have a massive impact on your people.
Especially on top performers who value positive culture.
If they don’t feel supported or rewarded, that will have a huge impact on their performance, on their desire to run your business FOR YOU.
You can have the best systems and processes but without implementation, they are useless.
Implementation will be hurt if your culture is off.
The majority of people talk about the next shiny object, software tools, productivity hacks.
The thing is, all these tactics are useful in some way but they are exactly that - just TACTICS.
These are surface-level, tactical solutions - none of them create real leverage and freedom inside a growing business.
Give me an example of one busy founder of a growing company who freed up their time because they switched from using Asana to using Trello. I’d LOVE to talk to that person.
It’s about an optimized PROCESS, your PEOPLE, and your PHILOSOPHY.
In other words, what I call the 3 P's of creating a business with leverage: PROCESS > PEOPLE > PHILOSOPHY.
When you put these 3 key elements the right way, you can create real leverage inside your business.
Your workflows and daily work are running smoothly - things are being handled in your business. Your clients have their expectations met.
Your team is running your business systems for you. You know you have the RIGHT people in the RIGHT seats at the RIGHT time doing work they LOVE while delighting your clients.
And your processes and people thrive in a positive culture that is process-driven and people-oriented.
Then you know things are running consistently in your business.
Things are being handled and you can finally step away from daily management to focus on meaningful growth.
It’s these 3 key areas working together that creates freedom inside your business, not a software tool on its own.
Make sure you focus on these 3 key areas in your business - your PROCESS, your PEOPLE, your PHILOSOPHY.
That’s what we do during our Business Process Audits where we focus on auditing business processes.
These audits are free, they are not sales calls, there is no catch, I promise you. No weird pitch.
The Audits are just that - Audits for your business to identify inefficiencies and gaps in your Process. More importantly - identify opportunities for more growth.
So if you are interested, you can schedule your 15-min Process Audit.
To recap for you: Focusing on these 3 key areas will help you create more freedom inside your business: Your processes, your people, your philosophy.
When your processes are optimized, you build a self-managed team of top performers, and you cultivate the right philosophy, you can create massive leverage.
I trust this makes sense and I look forward to potentially auditing your business processes for you.