Owner Evolution

Feeling Stuck at Your Current Size? It’s Time to Evolve as an Owner.

The way you ran your business when it was you doing everything yourself isn’t the way it can run with ten people.

Most owners never notice the change. The business grows, and they keep doing the job they’ve always done, only more of it.

That works for a while. Then the business reaches a certain size and stops getting easier. You’re working more hours than ever, and you still can’t get to the things that would move it forward.

Getting past that point starts with knowing where you are as an owner, and what the next stage asks of you.

In the words of Marshall Goldsmith: “What got you here, won’t get you there.”

Your business moves through stages as it grows. So do you.

I call this the Owner Evolution.

Owners move through five stages in the Owner Evolution

Owners evolve through five stages. At each one, the business needs something different from you.

Solopreneur. It’s you on a phone, in a truck, and at a job site. Or you at a desk in a WeWork. At this stage, you are the business.

Technician. You’ve got a couple of people now, maybe an apprentice and someone in the office. You’re still on the tools every day, involved in the work of the work. Your job is still the doing, with a few people helping you do it.

Operator Owner. Your team has grown, and you’ve handed off a lot of the doing. But every question, problem and decision still comes through you. You’re the hub of the business, and if you take the hub out of a wheel, the whole wheel collapses.

Leader Owner. You lead the people who are operating each section of the business. Someone is in charge of delivering the promise of your business. Others run sales, marketing, accounting and HR. You might even have a general manager.

Your job is no longer the doing of the doing. Your job is to lead the people who are doing the doing.

Investor Owner. Your role is largely strategy. You’re thinking out into the future and deciding where to invest.

Moving from Operator Owner to Leader Owner is the hardest shift in the Owner Evolution

When a business stops getting easier, the owner is almost always an Operator Owner.

Up to that point, each stage is about handing off more of the doing. You bring on an apprentice, then a team, and they take on more of the work.

The step to Leader Owner is different. By the time you’re an Operator Owner, you’ve already handed off a lot of the doing. What you haven’t handed off is the decision-making. You’re still the one who makes the calls.

To become a Leader Owner, you give each part of the business to someone who runs it, makes the decisions in their area, and answers for the results. That changes your job itself.

It’s also why working harder rarely gets an owner past this stage. More hours and another hire only give you more of the job you already have.

And the job you have is the one that built the business: knowing the work, solving problems yourself and being the person everyone could count on.

As long as everything runs through you, the business can only grow as far as you can stretch.

The shift to Leader Owner is easier with someone who can see the whole picture

This shift is hard to make from the inside. When you’re in the middle of your business, you can’t see the whole picture, because you’re stuck inside the frame.

Helping owners move from Operator Owner to Leader Owner is most of the work I do. We start by freeing up five to seven hours of your week, so you have time to work on the business. Then we work out who should own each part of it, and what they need from you to run it well.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your evolution as an owner, I’m here to help you make that shift.

Our proven business coaching program has delivered results to over 400 clients

Business coaching can help you:

• Improve operations, implement systems and remove bottlenecks so that you get your time back
• Hire and train the right team and eliminate people problems
• Grow your business with bigger and better clients
• Overcome cash flow issues and improve your financial management
• Make better decisions and become more profitable

When your business runs well, you get your life back.

Services are confidential.

Click here for full details or click the red button to schedule a complimentary 15-minute call.

Coaching only works when there's a good fit between coach and client. If you'd like to explore coaching, book a confidential 15-minute call so we can get to know each other.

SCHEDULE A CALL

More on the Owner Evolution and making the shift from Operator Owner to Leader Owner

Stuck in the Middle of Everything? It’s Time to Become a Leader Owner.
A video where I walk through all five stages and why the move from Operator Owner to Leader Owner is the hardest one, with the story of a factory owner who was in his car by 4:30 every morning for ten years.

Do You Have a Job? Or do You Own a Business?
A closer look at each stage of the Owner Evolution, the mindset that goes with it, and how to tell which one you’re in.

How to Delegate Decision Making (Not Just Tasks)
Why so many owners hand off the work but keep every decision, and how hats, haircuts and tattoos help you sort out which calls your team can make.

Why You Need to Shift from Working IN Your Business to Working ON Your Business
Four shifts that take you from Operator Owner to Leader Owner, and three signs you’ve made it.

Can You Take Two Weeks Off Without Checking Your Phone?
My presentation on the five stages of the Owner Evolution and the SCALE model, including how to give your people authority over the decisions in their area.

How to be less involved in your business (without everything falling apart)
Why being the hub is a normal stage for an owner, and the three things to put in place so you can see what’s happening without being in the middle of it.

When Everything in Your Business Runs Through You
My conversation on the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast about the 80-hour weeks that come with being the hub, and what changed for a client once he became a Leader Owner.