Her six-figure office manager texted: we're out of paper

A client of mine once got a text from her six-figure office manager. Three words: we're out of paper.

She could have fixed it in thirty seconds, and most owners would. You order the paper, you send a thumbs up, and you go back to whatever the text interrupted. Nobody counts what those thirty seconds cost, because they never show up as a cost. They show up as you being the one who always answers.

I've had that text on my mind for weeks, because I'm out of town for 26 days this month, and I left on purpose.

The first ten days are in a little cabin in the Georgia mountains. On Monday the 19th I worked one day, eight to four. One of the women I met with that morning saw the cabin behind me and said, "But it sounds like you're still working."

"Today only," I told her. "I'm working eight to four and then I'm done."

This week, the week of October 26th, there is nothing on my calendar. No sessions, no Monday forum, no consults. My clients can still Voxer me and I'll check it in the mornings and afternoons, because that is how I set it up and they know exactly when they'll hear back. Nobody needs me to pick up the phone.

The biggest piece of this test is the one you'd notice first. Isabella, my Growth & Scale Specialist, is back, and every Scale Strategy Session now belongs to her. They used to be 30 minutes with me. Now they're 45 minutes with her, and she runs them start to finish. She isn't covering them while I'm away. They're hers, this month and every month after. I'm trusting the onboarding process I built to do the job it was built for, and when I'm back, my time goes only to the work I can do as the strategic leader of this business.

I'm doing this for the same reason I ask my clients to do it. The second phase of my program is where we test and tweak. You leave on purpose and you watch for what breaks: who couldn't make a decision, who made a bad one, and where there was a gap you had been quietly filling with yourself. It is the hardest phase, because you are looking for things to go wrong, and for a woman who is used to fixing everything before anyone notices, that feels like failing on purpose. I'm writing down everything that breaks this month, and I'll tell you about it when I'm back.

Fourteen years ago this month I did this for the first time. In October 2012 I loaded up my RV and left my senior home care franchise for 30 days. I had spent two years rebuilding that business after it hit a million dollars on my 80-hour weeks, and I needed to know whether the rebuild would hold or whether I had only gotten better at holding everything together myself.

It held. The business did not fall apart.

Earlier this month I had a consult with an owner who runs a busy location with a team of five. I asked how much of her time goes to leading the business and how much to everything else. She said, "I don't even know where it ends and begins." Some days she can't do one strategic thing because she's making flyers, answering emails and sending out agreements. That afternoon she still had payroll to submit. And when two customers get upset with each other, she's the one who sorts it out. "I shouldn't handle that," she told me, "but I do right now."

This is the Phone She Cannot Silence. You stay reachable because that is how the business works, and it does work, which is what keeps you there. You're scared of what happens if you go dark, and somewhere underneath, you're a little scared of what happens if nothing does.

The thirty-second fix is the expensive one

Back to the paper.

When my client told me about that text, I asked her to widen the lens. I wanted to know whether the paper was on auto-ship and the office had started using more of it, whether her office manager had a company credit card, and whether anyone had ever told her where the office buys its supplies. Any one of those is a five-minute fix that makes the paper text disappear for good. Ordering the paper herself would have guaranteed the next text.

That is what Phase One is for, the first 90 days, which I call The 16-Hour Owner System. Instead of patching things with more duct tape, we go after the root cause through four pillars.

Structure is deciding who owns the decision. Every text you get is a decision nobody else has been told is theirs. When you hire someone, hand her the decisions that come with the role, in writing, so she owns the work. That's what I did with Isabella. The first conversation a woman has with my business is now hers to run.

Systems fix it once. Auto-ship, a company card, a list of where things live. The paper question gets answered one time. And a folder full of SOPs nobody opens, including you, is just a folder. What we build is a systems culture, where your team uses the systems because they make the job easier.

Support means letting someone else make the call. I told a client this month that the people she hands work to may not make the same decisions she would, and they will make decisions that are right for the business. Then I told her, "You're not perfect either. You just know how to fix anything that goes wrong." She was sure only she could run her jobs. That was only true because she hadn't trained anyone yet.

Streamline wraps around all three. Once the paper is solved, you keep asking what still comes to you that nobody needs you for.

Then comes Phase Two, where you leave and see what breaks. My rule for that phase is the one I ran my franchise on. As long as no one is dying, we're doing a good job, and we can figure out and fix our mistakes.

What the RV proved

After that trip I spent five more years fine-tuning the business, until my team started asking me, "Why are you here? We don't even need you." I learned to love that question.

By then my office was running in the top 9% of the network by revenue while I worked the least of anyone in it, with 17% team turnover in an industry that averages 120%. We were doing $3.3M a year on 16 of my hours a week, run remotely, and I sold it in 2017, before I turned 40.

I've watched a client do the same thing. Jennifer had to leave town for about a year to care for her mother-in-law. Her team ran the whole business on roughly an hour a day from her, and the business was still there when she came back.

Your room

The Scale Strategy Session is complimentary, 45 minutes, one on one with Isabella. You'll walk away with:

This is your room if you check your phone before your feet hit the floor on vacation. If your team is good and still texts you about paper. If you're proud you can fix anything, and you're starting to suspect that's why you can't leave.

The Session is Isabella's. The program is mine. If you join SRBE, you work with me directly.

Remember to live your one life! 💗Sailynn...

P.S. When I'm back I'll tell you everything that broke this month, and what we fixed. If you'd like to find out what would break in your business before you plan your own time away, book a Scale Strategy Session with Isabella.