How long does it take?

Longer than most owners expect, because the constraint is not the hiring, it is writing down what you know. Anyone promising a timeline has not seen your business.

What should I hand over first?

Whatever you do most often and dread least losing control of. Frequency builds the habit on both sides faster than importance does.

Do I need to hire a manager to do this?

Not necessarily, and hiring one before the work is written down usually fails — you have added a salary and kept the bottleneck.

← Answers

How do I get out of the day-to-day?

The work has to leave your head before it can leave your hands. Most owners are the bottleneck because the jobs only exist as things they know — pricing logic, which customer needs what, how a job is really done. Written down, that work becomes transferable. Until then, delegating just moves the questions back to you.

Write down the jobs that live in your head

The callout everybody does fifty times a year, the way you price, what has to be true before an install is signed off. If it exists only in your memory, nobody can take it from you, and every attempt to hand it over comes back as a phone call.

Hand over whole decisions, not tasks

Giving someone tasks keeps you as the person who decides. Giving them a decision — with the standard written down and the limits clear — is what actually removes you. It is also more uncomfortable, which is why most owners do the first and wonder why nothing changed.

The honest measure is not how you feel

It is whether things happen when you are not there. Who wrote the last ten daily reports? Who did the crew call last time something went wrong? Those answers are facts, and they tend to disagree with an owner's sense of how far he has stepped back.

Expect it to be slower and worse first

Someone else doing it at eighty per cent, consistently, without you, is worth more than you doing it perfectly. Owners who cannot tolerate the eighty per cent stay in the business permanently, and usually describe themselves as unable to find good people.

Also asked

How long does it take?: Longer than most owners expect, because the constraint is not the hiring, it is writing down what you know. Anyone promising a timeline has not seen your business.
What should I hand over first?: Whatever you do most often and dread least losing control of. Frequency builds the habit on both sides faster than importance does.
Do I need to hire a manager to do this?: Not necessarily, and hiring one before the work is written down usually fails — you have added a salary and kept the bottleneck.

Written for your trade

This is the kind of thing Solomon works through with owners using their own numbers. See how it works →