I have worked with many businesses and self-employed individual for over 30 years. I have been self-employed and have also built small businesses into big businesses. This is difficult and can be an extremely frustrating journey.
Many small business owners in the U.S. are self-employed and do not have employees or are small business owners who work extremely hard in their business with minimal staff members. Their businesses are completely dependent on them working hard and being highly active in their business.
Many small business owners do not want to give up the personal touch they have on their business. They want to be the ones who connect and build relationships with their customers. This is not bad, it is admirable. To many this is as satisfying and rewarding as it gets. It often brings financial comfort and freedom in their lives.
It is difficult to grow a business into what I call a company, or something big with multiple location and many team members. If it were easy, many more people would do it. There is a limited amount of fortune 500 companies for a reason. A foundation must be laid and then an infrastructure must be built so that a business can grow and be built. The first thing a business owner or partnership must do to accomplish this is to let go. Owners can not continue the daily perfected details that they customarily do. When a business owner lets go, that individual must accept that all jobs and work will only drop to 60 to 70% of how they were done when that business owner did most things or controlled most actions. This also is not bad, but It is different. It is the only way in my opinion to grow into a large business or company. The owner moves from being self employed to being a CEO. This is much easier expressed in a short blog like this than it is accomplished. An endeavor like this usually takes years and comes with a lot of frustration. Do not give up if this is your ambition. If a business can get to this point, it will be seen that the drop to 60% of how the original owner performed will be closer to 150% of how that owner performed. This is because there are more people and input into each task controlled by the owner at the start of this transformation. This is something to be proud of if it can be accomplished. It is also amazing that this new corporation will still have the personality and fingerprints of the original small business owner all over it.