Getting off the tools

The answer is laid out pretty clearly. (TL;DR the best time is a few weeks to months after it starts getting painful for the founder spinning all the plates – let’s make absolutely sure the commercial volume is there before committing to that hire)

But what about moving off ‘founder heavy ops’? 

Or to put it another way, as the business grows, when is it time to get off the tools?

It’s not founder-led sales. It’s founder-led everything

This one is hard. It’s nuanced. It’s personal. It can be emotional, after all, it’s very often the case that the founder is an expert practitioner who in the past made the jump from solo consultant to service business leader. 

There can be a bit of ego in this one. Your reputation is likely underwriting the business in the early days. How can your customers possibly accept anyone else?

Oh please. If ever the phrase ‘hire good people and get the f*ck out of their way’ should be used, then it is here and now. Letting go is essential if you want to go from you plus 2 or 3 others to you and 5, 10, 15, or 50 people.

Let other people in

Before we go any further, a moment’s pause. Bigger is not necessarily better. There is absolutely nothing wrong with staying solo or you plus some trusted freelance support. One of the biggest influences on my own early days in Make the Break, was from reading Company of One by Paul Jarvis with the ringing endorsement that small is still successful. 

But, if we do decide that our chosen journey is to grow a business with value beyond the founders own efforts, then guess what, you have to let other people on to the pitch.

You may also think that your stalwart clients won’t accept anyone but you. Let me tell you from personal experience that could not be more wrong. Good people do good things and clients love them for it. To be brutally honest that can hurt the ego (just for a moment). But look at the bigger gains, if the team are doing the do, then you have made the jump out of solo consultancy. The brand is gaining equity, the business is beginning to amass value.

Can your clients really accept anyone but you? (Spoiler: yes) 

And then comes the lightbulb moment, the time when you see what the team is doing, and you think…. yeah that’s way better than what I would have come up with. Now, my friends, we are really rocking and rolling.

Long-standing clients quickly get to love the team. New clients? They never knew anything different so make the role definitions clear right from the get go. You are not the first line of contact, and that’s ok.

When times get hard, it can be very tempting to put yourself back on the tools. After all, it’s likely that your own day rate is one of the higher, if not the highest in the company. Surely it makes sense to deploy yourself? But the thing is, in doing so, you can only add to the business, by being a leader you can act as a multiplier, getting the best out of several people all at once.

Everyone has a role 

I mentioned this is nuanced. I believe the ‘on the tool’s’ conversation is not a binary thing and less straightforward than the founder-led sales conversation. 

There is still a role the founder can and should play at with key accounts, at crucial project milestones, with specific technical knowledge. A founder can also be the point of escalation, because let’s acknowledge not everything is perfect every time. Just don’t be a hero, if you are swooping in to save the day then that’s on you – you should be sharing the knowledge and training the team on the skills, otherwise you’re preventing them from being fully empowered in role.

Seriously, get out the way 

One development I have seen that works well is when the founder takes up a niche and high-end ops role only. For example, in the offshore engineering world, the role of Expert Witness can be right up the grizzled founder’s street. They could take on this work rather than the day to day. They can also mentor other senior people in the business to upskill into that role. This has multiple benefits, it’s good for the founder and it’s good for the business. 

And it is only a small step to think something like that could be a very highly sought-after solo consultancy gig post exit. Big fees, coupled with no team stress on the next lap. Happy days.

While there is no one-size-fits-all answer and every one of us is a unique snowflake, the issue of extracting the founder from operations should more often that not be dealt with before weaning the business off founder-led sales. Get the founder out of ops, then productize the offering, and only then limber up to that potentially key sales hire.

But seriously, get the f*ck out the way.