Right now, if everything has gone to plan, I’m somewhere in Denmark, on a rollercoaster, with my son. And you’re reading this.
I didn’t write it this morning. I wrote it a while back, told a machine when to send it, then got on a plane. The me that’s talking to you and the me on the rollercoaster are days apart.
I am telling you this because a lot of people run their own business and a lot of people would be better at doing that thing if they took a break every now and again. Rollercoaster optional.
Plenty of owners feel they can’t do what I’ve just done. Not won’t. Can’t.
If they step off for a week, the week doesn’t happen then emails sit there, the decisions wait, the thing that keeps the lights on is the thing only they can do because the business doesn’t run, they run it, by hand, every day, and the day they stop is the day it stops and it just goes on and on, much like this sentence, and much like this sentence it becomes boring, and monotonous and terrible and you just want it to end.
That’s not a business or a good way to communicate. It’s a burden. I say that with love, because I carry one – put it down. It’s so heavy it will be exactly where you left it, maybe with a few leaves or some moss on it. Easily scraped off.
The man who made a brick, not a toy
Which brings me to where I am. Legoland. The original one, in Billund, the little Danish town where all of it started. A carpenter called Ole Kirk Christiansen began making wooden toys there in the 1930s and named the company Lego, from leg godt, Danish for play well.
The company he founded didn’t get big by making one brilliant toy. It got big by making a brick. A standard, boring, identical brick that clicks onto every other brick. Ole is gone, but there are children in a field in Denmark building things he never dreamed of, out of the exact system he left behind.
That’s what a business is meant to be. A set of bricks that fit together. Things someone else can pick up and carry on with, or that you can put down for a bit.
Most owners don’t build a brick. They carve a single, beautiful, irreplaceable thing, and the irreplaceable thing is them.
The catch is not technical
And here comes the “it’s kind of your fault” bit.
Building a business that runs without you means admitting your business can run without you. It stings like standing on Lego.
A lot of owners half-know how to let go, because being needed every hour feels like proof they matter. If it runs without me, what am I actually for? I understand the question. I just think it’s the wrong one. Being indispensable isn’t a badge. It’s a cage you built yourself, of Lego, if you like – let’s beat a metaphor to death. The work I’m proudest of is the work that carried on fine after I left, and the clients who needed me least by the end are the ones I did the best job for.
None of this is one big heroic decision, by the way. It’s a hundred small ones. Writing down the thing in your head. Letting someone else answer the email badly and then a bit better. Building the brick instead of carving the statue, over and over, until the day you can get on a plane and the lights stay on without you.
So this post going out while I’m feeling a bit sick after either eating too much sugar, or spinning around too fast isn’t a trick. It’s proof of the exact thing I sell.
If your business couldn’t survive you being on a rollercoaster in another country for a week, that’s worth knowing. It’s also fixable, and fixing it is my job.
Now where was I, oh yeah… weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Lewis English is the founder of Underpin Consultants. He helps stuck business owners get moving again, and build something that doesn’t need them in the room to keep working. If your business runs you, tell him how you’re stuck.
