In order to prevent yourself from being a prisoner to your business, you have to withdraw from the different divisions in your firm.
The sequence in which you withdraw is different for different people and the reason for this is because it depends on many variables including the type of people you currently have working for you.
For example, If you have someone who has good people skills then you can appoint them as a Senior Client Manager immediately. But if you don’t have that person on board, you won’t be able to withdraw from Division 3 (the SCM role) just yet
Normally, the easiest role to hire for (which also happens to be one of the lowest cost roles) is the admin staff which falls in Division 6.
So Division 6 (Admin) is the most common division to withdraw from first. This is followed close behind by Division 5 (Quality) because usually, the admin person (Division 6) can also deal with Surveys and organizing training sessions for the production team and dealing with the IT contractors (all in Division 5).
Then, the next most common Division to withdraw from tends to be Div.4 (Production) as its easier to hire grinders than Finders (Div.3)
The reason why Division 4 (Production) is withdrawn from before Division 7 (Financial accounts and Reports) is that most owners want to continue to do Division 7 themselves as they may not want an employee seeing their financials. However, I never had this problem and I didn’t really mind other people seeing my financials so I withdrew from Division 4 and 7 pretty much as soon as I could.
Division 3 (Sales) which requires Senior Client Managers are generally the last to withdraw from because they are the most difficult people to recruit as they need people skills and they deal with clients so owners tend to hang onto this role the longest. Owners also usually don’t know how to transition clients to a Senior Client Manager but if they want to grow, it’s imperative that they do transition
Division 2 (Marketing) or the hiring of the right marketing team is generally last because the first general challenge is to get the house in order which involves the other Divisions first.
Once they have their house in order, then firms can start looking at how they can grow their business. Once everything is under control, meaning work is getting done, the firm is getting great survey results from their clients and things are humming along, then they can look to grow.
The ultimate goal is to just “live in” Division 1 (Board of Directors) which requires a monthly meeting (around 2 hours) with the CEO and receive a monthly dividend or profit share.
Overall, the above journey is not set in stone as there are many variables that determine which Division comes first and second but what I’ve mentioned above is the most common withdrawal situation.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 4 ways we can help you grow your Accounting practice:
Download a free copy of our book – The Accountants 20 Hour Workweek – www.wizementoring.com
In this free book, we highlight the No.1 strategy that’s had the biggest impact on building our own practice to run without the owners – https://tinyurl.com/1k4uns6r
2. Join our free Wize Accountants Mastermind group
It’s our new free online community to share daily insights, tips and free tools to grow your practice — https://tinyurl.com/56e4yjdw
3. Save $’000s in your practice every month with this new program
We’ve just released a new practice acceleration program which will help you save money and time every month whilst taking your practice to a new level of growth. See if you qualify – https://tinyurl.com/y4p874s7
4. Build your firm to run without you
We have the step-by-step plan to grow a seven-figure profit practice that can run without the owner. Would you like it? Send an email to brenton@wizementoring.com for more information.