The Operator Weekly: Reducing Heroics

To make a long lasting business, you have to stop doing heroics.

Separating your thoughts from you through documentation and implementation creates a better system. If you don’t want to be involved in the day to day and empower your employees to make the “right” decisions, however you define that, you must record it. As you should expect your right-hand man to be your representative, the business systems you create can reflect your own thought process.

Reducing heroics takes away room for error, room for building a better business. A business isn’t a one-person band, it is systems and the people using the systems. Set your ego aside and build your dream.

Creating value at a business, whether you are going to hold it for the long term or sell it someday, requires documentation and processes for others to follow. Heroics signal procrastination, errors of omission and allow for future, repeating problems.

You can go save the day for your customer or a major project, but don’t make that the regular thing. Make sure you and your team capture errors from process. What was the root cause of the issue? Make an Airtable form for team members to write these down and regularly review them.

If you have any questions on how to better capture and fix these heroics, email us back. We would be happy to point you in the right direction.

Thanks to Everest Brady for his help, writing, and research in assembling this week’s newsletter.

Read

Overcoming Your Demons - Author of Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel is a partner at the Collaborative Fund where he writes their blog. You may have heard him guest on several podcasts episodes, where he explains life and business lessons in a verbose manner that makes sense. In “Overcoming Your Demons”, he wrote about overcoming a stutter. You can read Morgan's piece here.

Don’t Hire A Sales Guy (Part 2) - As Alan puts it, you are going to have to sell! Sales are really hard, you can do it and make it a better process. You can read The SMB MBA’s post here.

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This Week on Think Like an Owner

Alex's guests on this episode are Paul Yanchich and Ryan Beaver. Paul is a co-founder of Arcadea Group, a vertical market software holding company that Paul and his co-founder Daniel raised $320 million to found 14 months ago. In this episode, Paul is joined by Ryan who serves as managing director of value creation and operations.

Their conversation acts as a part two to our first episode with Paul and Daniel, episode 84, and breaks down learnings from 14 months of activity, lessons learned, where software acquisitions see the most improvement partnering with Arcadea, and evaluating management teams for the long haul.

This week's episode Q&A featured Live Oak Bank, a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle market companies. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think.

This Week in SMB Twitter

Think Like an Owner is sponsored by:

Live Oak Bank – Live Oak Bank is a seasoned SMB lender providing SBA and conventional financing for search funds, independent sponsors, private equity firms, and individuals looking to acquire lower middle market companies. If you are in the process of acquiring a company or thinking about starting a search, contact Lisa Forrest or Heather Endresen directly to start a conversation or go to www.liveoakbank.com/think.

Hood & Strong, LLP – Hood & Strong is a CPA firm with a long history of working with search funds and private equity firms on diligence, assurance, tax services, and more. To learn more about how Hood & Strong can help your search, acquisition, and beyond, please email one of their partners Jerry Zhou at [email protected].

Oberle Risk Strategies– Oberle is the leading specialty insurance brokerage catering to search funds and the broader ETA community, providing complimentary due diligence assessments of the target company’s commercial insurance and Employee benefits programs. If you are under LOI, please reach out to learn more about how Oberle can help with insurance due diligence at oberle-risk.com. Or reach out to the CEO, August Felker, directly at [email protected].

Oakbourne Advisors – Oakbourne is an independent retirement plan consulting firm that helps small companies design and implement great retirement plans for their teams. Whether you already have a 401(k) in place or are looking to start one for your team, please reach out to learn more about how Oakbourne can set your people up for success in retirement at oakbourne.com/think.

Interested in sponsoring? Reply to this email and let’s chat.