The Self-Managing Business Checklist
Want to create a business that can thrive without you? Consider this your ultimate “to do” list:
- ☐ Map the experience you want customers to have into “moments of truth,” where your customer interacts with your company (e.g., first time they visit your website/store or site, first meeting, etc.).
- ☐ Draw a visual of the journey from the moment they contact you to the moment they are consuming your product or service.
- ☐ Create a Standard Operating Procedure for your employees to follow to deliver each moment of truth flawlessly. More
- ☐ Get other people building your product or delivering your service. (If you have a lawn cutting business, hire someone to cut the lawns.)
- ☐ Assign someone to deal with customer escalations.
- ☐ Give your customer escalations a minimum number. (If your customer escalations person can solve the problem for less than your minimum number, they should not bug you.)
- ☐ Hire someone (or a team) to sell your product or service.
- ☐ Map out your sales and marketing process.
- ☐ Create a brand standards guide showing the fonts and colors you use, how to use your logo, etc..
- ☐ Create a Standard Operating Procedure for your salespeople to follow to deliver each step of your sales process. More
- ☐ Delegate ownership of your marketing process for getting leads.
- ☐ Create a set of forward-looking Key Performance Metrics (e.g., leading indicators) that reliably predict the health of your business in the future.
- ☐ Create and automate a dashboard of leading indicators.
- ☐ Set up a notification for when a leading indicator is forecasting a future problem.
- ☐ Create and automate a set of lagging indicators that reliably show how your business is performing.
- ☐ Put your customers on a recurring billing plan where possible.
- ☐ Where one-off billing is necessary, create a Standard Operating Procedure for estimating, invoicing, and collecting. More
- ☐ Create a three-month cash flow forecast, and assign someone the responsibility of updating it daily and notifying you if they anticipate your cash flow dipping below a threshold you set at any point in the next three months.
- ☐ Delegate collections and managing accounts receivables.
- ☐ Hire a general manager, president, or second-in-command.
- ☐ Remove your name from your company website, and replace it with the profile of your general manager, president or second-in-command.
- ☐ Create templates for HR forms (employee contracts, policies, etc.).
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