In every business, an owner’s vision is being able to find a way to remove themselves from the working equation and to work on their business. Work on your business,not for your business! By observing the framework, you can transform from an integral factor in the system to an outside influence, managing an automotive system operating your business.
There are 4 levers and they are called the “4 P’s.”
Prospect
Processes
People
Profit
1.Prospect.
Prospect! This is the marketing of your business. Do you have a steady stream of potential customers coming to your business? What role do your prospects lever play? Ask yourself how important are you for day to day operations? What will it take for you to remove yourself from the business itself?
2.Processes.
Second ‘P’ is Processes, the part of your business where you deliver on your promises. You deliver a service or product; how do you manufacture, ship and provide that service? What is the process that you go through to deliver? What are you selling in exchange for money? How do you fit into that process (the process you are most involved in), what happens if you remove yourself? What do you need to do to replace the hole that you will leave?
3.People.
Third ‘P’ is People. In almost every business you need employees to enable you to scale your business. What do these people have, what skills, what resources in terms of human capital do you need to have and how are you going to manage those employees? They are not machines, they have desires, needs and wants. You need human resources so how are you going to do that? Are you outsourcing, hiring (the right people to), how will they work and collaborate together? What will your role be in keeping the team going?
4.Profit.
The final ‘P’ is Profit. This will be the financial management of your business, cash flow, forecasting, investments, scalability, taxation crisis handling and so on. This is possibly the only lever that you might have a hands on approach to. This is guiding the ship and making sure that money is being generated and is spent wisely to grow the business. It also gives you a salary and an investment that you can sell.
Have a look at your business framework; see how you fit in and have a look at what will it take to extract yourself from your role and each one of those four pieces.