Avoid The Trap: Processes to Help Your Business Grow

Business owners often dream of taking their business “to the next level,” by which they usually mean reaching a point where it takes on a life of its own and ceases to become a mere extension of the founder. This can occur when annual revenues are half a million dollars or $10 million. Or it can never happen at all. In that case the company faces a decidedly unhappy future, if much of a future at all.

Making a transition to the “next level” rarely just happens. It is usually the result of a determined and focused effort. Two successful Manhattan entrepreneurs, Deb Wasser, the founder of Deb’s Family Disco, and Ruth Ro owner of of RRSK Studios, employed different strategies to transform their companies from “personality-based” to “process-based” businesses. Looking closely at how they went about it can help other owners save their businesses (and their sanity) from the weight of their own success.

SOLUTION: SPECIFY JOBS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
When Deb Wasser started Deb’s Family Disco, her main goal was to create a profitable business from the key factors of her life: her 4-year-old daughter, Savvy; her natural gifts as a promoter; and her fondness for “partying and dancing with friends.”  The result was Deb’s Family Disco, a weekly “ball” where kids and adults could dance together in a real discotheque for birthday parties, fundraisers, and other events. Before she knew it, Deb’s Family Disco was a smashing success:  It won awards for “Best Birthday” and “Best Family Activity” in New York magazine’s Best Of issues, and 25 families a month were celebrating at Deb’s Family Disco.

“In the beginning,” says Wasser from her busy home office in midtown Manhattan, “I ran the whole thing: taking sales calls, creating the gift bags and custom birthday cakes, and playing DJ at the actual parties.
“But after we appeared in New York magazine’s Best Of issue, the phone never stopped ringing,” she says. Her “fun family business” quickly became a job that required 60 hours a week. She constantly worried that details might be slipping through the cracks.

“I had reached this point,” she says, “where I wanted the business to grow more, but there wasn’t enough of me to go around. I felt stuck and stressed out. I really enjoy certain parts of the job, but I didn’t know how to remove myself from any of the daily details.”

Sound familiar? Despite her success, Wasser had fallen victim to one of the most common mistakes made by small-business owners: she was running a personality-based business. In a personality-based business, there is no organization of job responsibilities or business procedures. The major pitfalls associated with running a personality-based business are that there are no plans for training employees, delegating work, or hiring new people. As the work piles up, the owner (and other key employees) simply works more hours. Eventually mistakes are made: Customer care slips and orders aren’t filled correctly, for example. Additionally, there are no plans for the owner to take a vacation or be replaced if he or she becomes sick or injured.