Most businesses are in a survival trap, and one sure sign that a business owner has escaped the trap is if they can take a month off the business and it’s still working when they get back.

Tibor Mackor, Founder and CEO at Better Business Strategies Ltd, told a TNG online networking event recently that the key to building a business independent of you is to be strategic about your time and declare your core business role, recruit the right people and implement efficient systems.

Managing your time
Tibor talked about the four Ds as a formula for how a business owner’s time should be spent:

• Doing – 80 per cent of the time is execution.
• Decision – two per cent of the time is spent making decisions and assigning actions.
• Delegating – eight per cent is making sure the proper outcomes are assigned to the right people.
• Designing – ten per cent of your time should be dedicated to designing what your future should look like.

Declaring your business core role
Declaring the business’ core role is where many smaller companies still struggle with the idea of what they actually offer.

“Often business owners get into the habit of saying ‘yes’ to everything, which isn’t good because the next phone call might be an even bigger project where your real core role and your real passion lies and you’ve just allocated time elsewhere.”

Tibor said it is important for every business to protect and serve the core role, which requires that the business owner educates the team on the core role once it is established – which is predicated on what exactly it is you deliver.

Next, identify the individuals and or resources serving the business core role. The selection of your team becomes a vital aspect of your delivery. If you don’t have the right system to make sure that you’re hiring the right people, you will have challenges in the future.

“Make sure that you’ve got the right people on board and the right resources. The right resources could be suitable computers, the right motor vehicles or the right machinery for whatever your business is to make sure that your core role is delivered.

Trash, transfer and trim 
Trash, transfer and trim are actions designed to alleviate distraction from the core role, which is to cut out all the stuff that people do that they shouldn’t be doing.

“Trash means get rid of it if it doesn’t serve the core role, transfer to somebody else – such as a virtual assistant – or trim to make sure that your key resources are serving the core role of your business.”

Capture systems
Tibor says that while in the past standard operating procedures were thick manuals that you had to wade through to try and understand what was expected of you. Today’s production and process environments use videos to communicate the core role to employees and new people coming in.

“Videos are a fantastic way to capture your business processes and systems.”

Balance your team
Match the strongest team member traits to tasks that are most needed.

“It is so vital that the right people are hired to do specific roles and that the position and the person are focussed on delivering the right thing for your customer.

“Very often, people just put out an ad to attract whoever they can. But if you’ve got the right systems in place and people are really happy in their role, that becomes a self-fulfilling way of attracting the right people.”

Finally, once you’ve gone through the process and set up your systems and identified your core role, it’s about removing you as the owner from the business to break the company’s dependency on you as the owner.

“In the beginning, use shorter vacations throughout the year to test and improve on the way to your ultimate month-long vacation.”

The Networking Group would like to thank Tibor for sharing his wisdom to the group.  If you would like to watch the full session please see our YouTube Library.

TNG Connect NZ Online – Networking Online

Meets fortnightly on a Friday 10.30am to 11.30am via Zoom 

– TNG Members free
– Visitors, one free visit
– Educational forum

Next Online Meeting:  10.30am Friday 10 September 2021

For information about our next speaker please see our website.