Like Father, Not Like Son

Childhood Lost

When I was young and played a lot of sports, I was always envious of all the other kids whose parents were there to cheer them on. My father was a hardworking mechanic who owned his business, but being a one-man operation never allowed him the time to close up the shop — even taking family vacations together was difficult.

Becoming My Father’s Son

I started my own technology consulting business in 1997. By 1998, I had more business than I could possibly ask for, and took on a business partner. Yet I still found myself falling victim to the same work situation that my father did. I couldn’t take a day off; I was putting in over 100 hours a week working out of my apartment and getting phone calls at all hours of the day. There was no business without me. I had become the business and I was in trouble. I needed something to change.

Systemize to Optimize

My partner and I read the ground-breaking best-seller The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber. We had attempted to implement some of what we learned from the book on our own, and then followed-up with the E-Myth mastery coaching course. We came away with two tenets of being a successful entrepreneur:

• Work on your business, not in it.
• Build systems, let your people run the systems, and let the
systems run the business.

Easier said than done. How to go about doing it?

We learned how to develop detailed systems for every aspect of the business, from a complete customer service evaluation to a system for technician troubleshooting. We are not only saving a tremendous amount of time, but also learning to delegate responsibility, thus creating a company that can stand on its
own, even in our absence.

Freedom In Becoming My Own Man

What the process did for us was truly revolutionary. Every aspect of our business is now systemized, with people in place to manage the systems. We continually ask ourselves, “What would happen to the business if we left for six months?” Today my partner is able to coach his daughter’s softball team and I can play golf, which is something that I was not able to do previously. If you want to make the company you own valuable, you need to build it so it runs without you.

We have 17 people today and will hire another four this year; next year we will hire 10 more people. We have had sustained growth every year since 1999. This would never be possible without systems. When I started the business, my father made me promise not to make the same mistakes he made. Today, my father is disabled and not able to work. His business had to be sold and he didn’t get nearly what he should have. But then, the business wasn’t worth anything without him.

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