A business that ‘runs itself’ while turning a healthy profit is pretty much the dream for most startups. And yes, it is possible! Of course, you will still need to be a competent leader by overseeing everything.
But it is possible to create a business that eventually runs without a massive workload on your desk each day. Instead, you can be responsible for quality control, seeing where improvements need to be made and even expanding further. Here are some of the ways you can go about doing this.
Get the right staff on board
Finding the right employees that are good at their job is crucial. You need people that are highly motivated and passionate about the success of the business. While you will oversee your employees, for your business to ‘run itself’ you need to have the right people for each task.
You can do this by making your company an attractive place to work. Offer good rates of pay and employee benefits. Provide them with decent equipment and a well thought out office space. Once everything is running well, you could consider hiring junior staff members and training them up.
You could have senior members show them the ropes, and invest in training courses or qualifications for them to work their way up in your company. This invests in the future of your workforce, if people leave or retire later down the line you have staff members already in place who know the job.
Training staff also leads to better employee commitment and retention. The last thing you want is a high staff turnover, which can affect and disrupt workflow. So this is a great way of increasing the chances of your staff staying.
Hire your successor
At some point, you should be prepared to do one of the most important aspects of a scalable business: hire someone to take your place.
You should have a plan that defines what you expect from your successor and how long the transition will take place. Your plan should clearly spell out when you want this to happen. In one year? Two? Three?
And most importantly who will be your successor. Will you hire someone from outside or inside your company? If you can’t develop talent from within, you’ll have to look outside. Don’t just hire skill when you have no choice but to hire from outside. Consider personality too.
Find the right productivity apps
Good software will make light work of tasks that would be tedious and time consuming for an employee. It also cuts out the risk of human error and means you do not have to employ additional staff. Invoicing software for example will take care of your accounts receivable.
Accounting software in general is useful, good accounts are essential for any business. While you’re likely to need to hire an accountant too, decent software allows them to do their job efficiently and gives them time to focus on the tasks that can’t be automated by a computer.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be used to plan your interaction with customers. It does this by using information that has been collected on previous visits or interactions with your company.
It can include everything from sending an email voucher code on a customer’s birthday, to recommending products based on what they have previously bought from your store.
Embrace social media
Understanding and using social media well is crucial to the success of your business. One of the great benefits of it is that it acts as a free source of advertising.
For example, when customers leave reviews and share your business with their network you’re reaching a broad number of other people without spending a penny.
Plus when potential customers get a genuine and honest recommendation from someone in their social circle, they are much more likely to trust the company which is so important.
Creating a business that can run on its own is very rewarding, especially when you reach that point where you can step away for sometime and not have to worry whether you will still have a business that runs perfectly even in your absence. But it takes a lot of planning.