Let’s start from the premise that a business that needs you there in order to work isn’t a business, it’s a job. Now I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that to start any kind of business, whatever it is, you’ll have to put in a big effort in the short term to make a profit in the medium or long term. Now for the good news.
Any business can be set up so that you don’t have to be there. Otherwise it would be a bad business.
You need to distinguish between the idea of setting up a business as a self-employed person and creating a business that is an asset. An asset is something that earns you a profit while you spend your time creating more assets (building more profitable businesses). A self-employed person is someone who wins the prize of work for the number of hours they put into the job.
One business that doesn’t require your presence from the start is the vending business. Vending machines make you money while you get on with something else.
It’s very typical of Hispanic business owners to think that a business only works if you’re there, as we discussed in the differences between Hispanic and American business owners. You should look at a business for what it can give you after you acquire it.
You’ll have heard that a bar or restaurant is a business that ties you down. It ties you down as long as you only have one place. If you decide to open four, you’ll see that your servitude becomes more about paperwork, because you physically won’t have time to work in all four.
Remember what we said in our article How to become a successful entrepreneur. These days you can set up any business that crosses your mind. You don’t need to know everything about your business. That’s where a business owner’s most important trait comes in: a business owner hires leaders who can run the business when he isn’t there.
If you can’t manage that, you’ll have failed as a business owner.
One of the problems business owners have when it comes to handing their business over to a manager is that they think the manager won’t do it well. Well, here’s a piece of advice:
If you don’t trust an employee, don’t keep them in your company. Hire someone you trust.
The business ideas we suggest in these articles are all designed to work as businesses and to create jobs in the medium term. A business for you, a job for others. If it’s a job for you, it will probably end up being a failure for you too.
Remember: a business owner’s job is to make a business work, by creating a market strategy and a good business plan, and by thinking of a thousand ways to expand the business. For the things you naturally don’t know, you can always hire a specialist in that field and sector.
I’ll pass on a piece of advice I was given a long time ago:
When you have no free time because you’re so involved in your business, open a second business.
It may sound crazy, but it works, and it’s a good way to feel like a real business owner. What’s more, with a first business up and running, financing the second and third is much easier.
In short, any business you see in your everyday life can run without the owner being there. It’s as simple as hiring one or more capable people to run it.
Featured image: Anna Frodesiak, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
