The power of letting go and the joys of having other people do stuff in your business.

(I know that it’s an odd little title, I’m sorry for that. But I make an important point.)

If you’re growing and scaling your business, if you want to grow and get bigger and make more money, do more good work and build a cool thing of the business, you need to learn to let go. And I’ll tell you why. If you have to have your hand in everything, if you have to be supervising, making sure things don’t go wrong, making sure quality of workmanship stays high, you’re going to get yourself spread very thin and you’re going to limit your business’ ability to do work. You’re going to become a bottleneck. (You don’t want that.) It’s not very satisfying and it restricts the money you make and the size your business can grow.

Learn to let go.

You can’t just let go and throw work to other people and hope that they do a good job, you need to let go in a controlled way. I understand that keeping a tight control of your costs, your quality, the work and of everything is what made you successful so far. But like I’ve said, it only works to a certain point and then you can’t scale anymore. It’s not a scalable thing to do so you do need to change. Part of that change of course is letting go.

How do you let go without it all going to sh*t?

The answer is systems. The answer is documenting and writing systems and processes for the work of your business and the other stuff, the marketing, the sales, and the back office, but for the work of your business in particular, so that everybody does things the same way, so that you’ve documented the way we do things in this business. Then, your output is consistent, your customers get a consistent experience, and you’ve made a thing, a business.

How do you document a system?

• You write down the processes
• You train everybody in how to do it that way
• You give them tools to help them not forget how to follow your process (checklists and things like that).
• You hold them accountable. You’re a bit patient and you let some time go by while this stuff beds in.
• You step back and enjoy the feeling of stuff going on without you having to supervise and make sure it’s done the right way because everyone’s learnt now and they’ve got tools to help them stay focused on doing it the right way, your way.

Recommended Reading: Outsourcing and the Miracle of the Cloud – growing your business with offshore or external people

So that’s what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about using systems and processes and tools to make sure the work at your business gets done the same consistent way every time. And that is how you grow and scale. When that starts to happen in your business, it’s a really nice feeling.

I’m seeing it happening in my business now. People are taking initiative and doing stuff and leading me, not just me leading them, and the business starts to take on a life of its own. And that’s when you know you’re making something cool and not just working harder.

So don’t be surprised when I’m telling you that I can help you with this. This is what I do. I’m a business coach for tradies and I help people grow and scale.  I help people build systems into all those parts of their business where systems are helpful and necessary. And guess what? I’m running a workshop up here in Byron Bay on a weekend. It’s called the Tools Down Workshop because it’s when you put your tools down and think about how to work on your business for a couple of days instead.

So for you Australians at least on the East Coast, why don’t you consider coming up here? Go to my website, www.smallfish.com.au, you’ll find the Tools Down Workshop everywhere.

If you’re not in Australia, if you’re in the UK in particular, if there are 50 of you who will say you want to come to my workshop, I’ll come over and do one over there. How about that?

See you later.