Latest news with #businessfreedom
Forbes
17 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Why Entrepreneurial Wealth Is Really About Freedom, Not Just Profit
Meredith Moore is the Founder & CEO of Artisan Financial Strategies LLC. She is fascinated by the interplay between gender, money and power. We don't start businesses just to work harder. We start them to gain more control—over our time, our income and our lives. But somewhere along the way, that freedom gets lost in the grind. Revenue might be up. You may be hiring. But if every decision still routes through you, are you actually free? The truth is that business success without personal freedom is just another job—one you can't even quit. Revenue Isn't Enough: Freedom Requires Structure Entrepreneurs often chase growth thinking it'll eventually lead to more flexibility. But without the right structure, more revenue can just mean more responsibility. Creating recurring revenue—retainers, subscription models, management fees—is one of the simplest ways to buy back your time. When cash flow doesn't require your presence, freedom becomes possible. People Are The Linchpin Time freedom is directly tied to team design. If your business can't run without you, then you are the bottleneck. I worked with a founder who built an eight-figure company, yet she hadn't taken a real vacation in years. The turning point wasn't revenue—it was building a leadership layer. Once we pointed out that design flaw, she was able to correct it, and less than a year later, she took a two-week unplugged trip. The business not only survived but grew. According to the Exit Planning Institute, owner dependence is one of the biggest drags on business value: 'A business that is dependent on the owner will never reach full value potential.' Ironically, the less your business needs you, the more valuable it becomes—and the more freedom you create. Liquidity Means Options Many business owners have all their net worth tied up in the business. That's risky not just financially, but emotionally. Freedom comes when you have access to clickable capital—money you can move with the click of a mouse. Think cash reserves, brokerage accounts, cash value insurance and business liquidity. You need assets you can tap quickly when life moves. Building economic value outside of your business is key because, on average, 80% of most business owners' net worth is locked inside the business itself. Liquidity gives you breathing room. It gives you clarity. And most importantly, it gives you choices. Exit Visibility Isn't Optional Even if you're not planning to sell anytime soon, you should be thinking like an owner who could. It starts with knowing your valuation drivers, cleaning up your financials and building a succession path. These aren't just exit strategies. They are freedom strategies. In 2023, 75% of business owners said they plan to transition in the next 10 years. But do these leaders have a written plan or advisory team in place? Most owners wait too long and are forced into exits they didn't design. Whether your future looks like an employee stock ownership plan or a strategic sale, the best outcomes go to the owners who started planning five to 10 years out. Here's an example: A client of mine with a $2 million professional services firm believed she was in good shape for an exit maybe a decade later. But once we reviewed her value drivers and mapped out a succession plan, we uncovered operational risks tied to her constant presence. By building a sales process and elevating team leads, she freed herself from daily involvement in the short term and built real enterprise value. Freedom Isn't A Fantasy—It's A Design Problem We tend to romanticize freedom like it's a 'someday' reward for hard work. But freedom isn't a finish line. It's a natural consequence of having the right elements in place: • A system • Recurring revenue • Transferable operations • Liquidity • Exit visibility These are the pieces that buy back your time—the most valuable asset of all. You can rebuild wealth. You can grow again. But you can't get time back. Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify?
Forbes
02-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 Steps To Make Your Business Run Without You In 90 Days
5 steps to make your business run without you in 90 days Your phone buzzes when you've closed your laptop. Another crisis needs your attention. You built this business to create freedom, but instead you've created a prison you're trapped inside. Every decision goes through you. Every problem lands on your desk. Take a vacation? Impossible. The whole thing collapses without you watching every move. Most founders think systemization means writing a few process documents and hoping for the best. They hire people but never truly delegate. They create businesses that demand their constant involvement, then wonder why they feel trapped. I sold my agency after ten years of building systems that made my presence optional. I know that businesses can thrive without their founders micromanaging every detail. Building a self-running business requires ruthless documentation, progressive delegation, and the courage to let go before you feel ready. Over the next 90 days, you'll document every process, hire strategically, test your systems under pressure, and systematically remove yourself from daily operations. You'll build something valuable enough to survive and thrive without you. Systemize your business operations to create freedom Start recording yourself doing every task. Use Loom to capture your screen while you explain decision logic and click sequences. When you respond to customer emails, narrate why you chose specific words. When you approve invoices, explain what you check for. These recordings become your training library and collection of essential SOPs. Create simple templates for recurring decisions. Build a pricing matrix that shows exactly when to offer discounts. Design email templates for common scenarios. Make approval chains crystal clear. Your goal is to capture the thinking behind the actions as well as the actions themselves. By week two, you should have 20 recordings covering your most frequent tasks. Find a virtual assistant. Ask friends to make recommendations or use a platform like Upwork or JobRack. If you already have one, tell them they're about to level up. Start them with your simplest documented tasks: tracking success metrics, invoice processing, calendar management. Watch them work through your documentation. Note where they stumble. Fix those gaps immediately. Here's the test: can your first assistant train assistant number two using only your materials? If that wouldn't be possible, your documentation needs work. Keep refining until knowledge transfers smoothly between team members. Build three levels of decision authority. Level one: routine tasks your team handles without asking. Level two: situations requiring supervisor approval. Level three: strategic decisions that still need you. Define exact thresholds. Customer refunds under $500? Level one. New vendor contracts? Level two. Changing company direction? Level three. Create your best guess starting point then refine as edge cases arise. Make daily dashboards showing your key metrics. Cash position, customer satisfaction scores, team productivity, growth: all visible in under 30 seconds. Use dashboard tools to pull this data automatically, or just a simple spreadsheet your assistant puts together. Add monitoring and feedback loops and put someone in charge of interpreting the data and making recommendations. Your team needs to know the score without asking you. Implement the vanish test. Tell your team, then disappear for five days. Turn off notifications. See what breaks. The breaks show the hidden dependencies where your business still needs you as a crutch. Document every issue that surfaces. These become your priority fixes. Start responding to questions with questions. When someone in your team asks for approval, ask them what they'd do. When they need a decision, have them present two options with recommendations. Delay your responses by 12 hours, then 24. Force your team to think through problems before escalating. You're training their judgment. And this takes patience. Create weekly rhythms that run without you. Monday planning sessions where teams set their own priorities. Wednesday check-ins for progress updates. Friday wins celebrations. Join these meetings as an observer, not a leader. Let your team own them. If it's right for your business, implement profit-sharing tied to autonomous metrics. Maybe it's revenue generated without founder involvement. Perhaps it's customer issues resolved without escalation. Make the team financially invested in your absence. Assign honour to self-sufficiency. Reward the behaviour you want to see more of. Transform your mindset from operator to owner Your biggest obstacle probably isn't systems or staff. It's your own psychology. You've trained your team to need you by always being available. You've built your identity around being indispensable. Letting go feels like losing control. Shift how you measure success. Stop celebrating long hours and start celebrating problems solved without you. Share these wins publicly. Make heroes of team members who handle crises without deploying you. When your team believes they can succeed without you watching, they'll take pride in doing so. Build recurring systems that multiply your impact Document the decision-making philosophy that dictates your decisions. Write down how you think about pricing, customer service, and quality standards. Your team needs to understand your reasoning to make similar choices without you. They need to be able to think as you. Create feedback loops that bypass your inbox entirely. Route customer praise and complaints directly to the people who can act on them. Set up automated surveys, review monitoring, and support ticket systems. Make information flow without you as the middleman. Your 90-day path to entrepreneurial freedom Build a business that runs without you by instilling discipline from day one. Document every process with obsessive detail. Hire strategically and test whether your systems work without your voice. Create clear decision hierarchies and dashboard visibility. Test your setup by disappearing, then fix what breaks. When your phone stays silent but your business still grows: you've won. When you own an asset that generates value without your constant presence: you can finally book that trip. The business that needs you least is worth the most, to customers, buyers and to you. Get my best prompts to change your life in 14-days.
