I never planned to be the boss. I was quite content as an employee. But in 2004, when the co-founder of my company retired, I stepped out of a sales and marketing role and bought the business from her to become its leader.
At a small company, everyone wears 10 hats. In the early years as owner, I learned Quickbooks, worked on projects, hired and fired, wooed clients and emptied the trash on Fridays. Like most owners, I feel very protective of my company, its reputation and the quality of our work, but slowly I added people who were better at certain jobs than I was, so I became more comfortable letting go.
Keeping your nose out of their work is harder than it sounds. But if you don’t, you will drive them away and stagnate your business. I distinctly remember the first time I realized that an entire week’s worth of challenging projects was finished to perfection without any input from me. I did a happy dance around the office, thrilled at the freedom that provided.
Time that was once spent knee deep in the weeds on projects or with personnel issues is now being handled by people who are doing an amazing job. So, when that shift happened (it took years) I had to decide how to use that free time. I’m a member of Entrepreneurs Organization’s Accelerator program, so I asked a lot of these small business owners what the highest use of their time was to keep their business growing. The response I kept hearing was to find the intersection of what I love to do and what makes the company money and do that 75 percent of the time.
I started tracking my mood during busy work weeks to see what energized me, what made me happy and what I tended to push off. I eagerly jumped on anything that meant I was out of the office talking to people, networking for my business, engaging with the nonprofit boards I sit on or learning new things about Northeast Ohio that would be helpful to the job candidates and recent transplants that Executive Arrangements works with every day.
Then I noted what drained my energy so much that I kept putting it off until the 11th hour, including creating standard operating procedures to ensure efficiency and profit, virtual conversations on social media and detailed financial reports. Soon I had colleagues working on every one of these tasks, and quickly they were all doing a better job than me. Finding people who have the strengths I lack was empowering.
I now have a team helping me create the solid structure my business needs to grow. And some of my colleagues, who are incredibly clever and authentic, are way better at feeding the social media beast than I am. They can keep our company’s brand alive in the marketplace. Others are on top of all of our financials and employee engagement. My advice to entrepreneurs: Pick the 10 hats you wear carefully so you love your job for a long time.
Margy (with a hard G) Judd is president and owner at Executive Arrangements.
