Does Your Business Run Without You?

Here is a simple test of how transferable your business really is.

What happens when you leave?

If every important decision leads back to you — pricing, customers, vendors, employees — you may have built a successful company. But you may also have built a puppet where you're holding every string. Take you away, and everything slows down.

A transferable business is different

Processes are documented. People are trained. Authority is delegated. Customers are served. Decisions still get made. The machine keeps running when you leave the room.

That's important because someday a buyer, lender, investor — or even you — will ask: "What happens if the owner isn't here?"

As I write in The CFO Operating System: Buyers don't want to buy a job. They want to buy an asset.

So try this

Imagine disappearing from your business for 30 days. What breaks first? Sales? Pricing? Collections? Customer service? Operations?

Whatever came to mind first is probably where your work begins.

• Document it
• Train someone
• Give them authority
• Then test it again

The goal isn't to make the owner unnecessary. It's to build a business that doesn't require a hero every day.

From Chapter 4 of The CFO Operating System — Value Driver: Transferable Operations.