Are You in the Owner's Trap?

One of the universal yearnings of mankind is for freedom.  We yearn for freedom in our businesses, too.  It shows up in the form of a desire for more time, more income and wealth, and in the ability to do work that energizes us.  Often, the desire for freedom is what causes people to go into business in the first place.  And the work of building the business is often done with the motivation for creating more freedom in the form of a business that runs substantially without your hands-on involvement, or a business that returns value when you retire and sell the business asset you’ve spent your career building.

 

One of the things that stifles our business freedom is what John Warrillow, creator of The Value Builder System™ calls The Owner’s Trap.

Reasons that business owners find themselves in The Owner’s Trap are the following:

• Owner has the most industry knowledge.
• Customers want to talk to the owner.
• Owner wants to please customers so says yes to too many customer requests.
• The owner’s employees do not have the same level of industry experience as the owner so cannot deliver what the owner promises customers.
• Owner gets involved in delivering what the customer asked for.
• Customer is happy and buys more from the owner to repeat the cycle.

Does that sound familiar?  Of course, it all results from wanting to please customers, and offer the maximum value possible to them.  Who better to do that than the person that built the company, right?  More than likely it was your efforts as Salesperson-in-Chief that successfully launched your business in the first place, and you feel reluctant to change what has worked so well for you in the past.

But there are consequences that do indeed entrap us and limit our business freedom.  Here are some signs of being in the Owner’s Trap:

• Business slows down when you are away.
• Customers come to you when something goes wrong.
• Worst of all, company revenue has reached a plateau, because after all, you only have so much capacity to do the work customers desire and expect.

Businesses stuck in the owner’s trap are stressful to run, exactly the opposite of the freedom we universally seek.  Those businesses are also worthless because nobody is going to buy a company so dependent on its owner.

Getting out of the Owner’s Trap is not easy.  It requires planning, management, and most of all… change.  If you’re ready to free yourself of the trap but don’t know where to start, call a business coach for some perspective and advice.  Or find out your overall Value Builder Score, assess your business value, and consider enrolling in The Value Builder System™ to free yourself from the Owner’s Trap.  Get started today by learning your score via our 15 minute confidential survey at Value Builder Score Survey.