How Do I Build A Business That Doesn’t Depend On Me Being On 24/7?
The $100 MBA Show
Omar and Nicole from The $100 MBA Show share their personal journey of escaping the burnout of running a business that demanded constant attention, using a
Key takeaways
- Businesses that depend on you 24/7 are unsustainable and prevent personal freedom.
- The first major shift comes when you hire someone with high agency who can make decisions independently.
Main topics
- Building a business that doesn't depend on your constant presence
- The emotional toll of being always-on as an entrepreneur
Notable quotes
"I remember vividly we were out in Florence and I had to leave our vacationing with them because I had to do like a quick meeting with the engineers."
"Why am I feeling so needed in this company? Why are people depending on me so much?"
Conclusion
True business freedom comes not from working harder, but from building systems, hiring exceptional
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Today's Q &A Wednesday's question comes from Gail and Gail asks, how do I build a business that doesn't depend on me 24-7? Gail, Nicole and I lived this for years and we're going to share with you how we got out of that life and what it cost us in that process. Speaker 2 (0:24) Welcome back to the $100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. Hey, if this show has helped you in any way, it would be amazing if you dropped us a quick review on whatever app you're using right now to listen to this podcast. It helps me and my team bring you new episodes every week, and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover the podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Nicole, do you remember the days of Webinar Ninja, our software company, which we started in 2014? What did our life look like when the business depended on us 24-7? Speaker 1 (1:07) Yeah, I remember a lot. I wrote a lot of notes. Sometimes I get sweaty palms when I think about those days. I think the thing that I remembered, the first thing that came to mind was... the notifications that I had on my phone. We had all our tools and app on our phones, of course, but one of those apps that stands out is our customer support inbox. And I had that. Speaker 2 (1:31) Intercom. Speaker 1 (1:31) Intercom. Yes. We used Intercom and I had that on my phone. And I could just go into any inbox at any moment, every minute of the day to see if there was an issue. It was 24-7. Speaker 2 (1:43) Yeah. The memory that comes to mind is we went to Italy with friends of ours. Jason and Caroline, please forgive us Speaker 1 (1:50) for the story. Speaker 2 (1:51) But we were going from city to city, went from Milan to Tuscany, went to Florence. And then from there, we went down south and went to Sicily. But as the trip progressed, the more and more. I was tuning in back into work. So I remember vividly we were out in Florence and we're walking around in a food hall and I had to leave our vacationing with them because I had to do like a quick meeting with the engineers, the developers to sort out some sort of issue. So I had to like haul back to the Airbnb. I thought it was just going to be like 30 minutes, but it ended up being like four hours. And I remember, you know, that happened. And then when we got to Sicily, I was on my phone constantly trying to solve some problems or work with my engineers to try to figure out the next feature release. And I remember like Jason just kind of looking at me like, dude, we're supposed to be on holiday here. Like, what are you doing? And I felt so embarrassed and I felt like maybe I need to do something about this. Speaker 1 (2:50) That's a really standout moment. I remember how tough it was on you because. you felt the obligation to the business and it's like you had no choice. And I was like, okay, don't worry, you go and I'll, you know, stay with the guys. It's like we, you know, split our roles. But I remember when we were out that night and, you know, you said you'd come back after like four hours and I just kept looking at my watch going, oh, he should be here soon, he should be here soon. And it's like I was constantly taken out of the moment with just hanging out with friends because, you know, obviously I felt bad that you were. back at the hotel room dealing with that thing that had come up. And it was just, yeah, it was just really awkward. And I felt we let down our friends. But at the same time, I also felt like, what else are we going to do? Like that was, we had no choice. Speaker 2 (3:40) Yeah. I mean, I think we told ourselves like, this is just what business is like, you know, we have to sacrifice our holiday because who else is going to do it? You know, who's going to care as much as I am and all that kind of stuff. And I think we bought into that narrative. which kept us stuck in that situation. I don't think we learned that lesson in the moment. I think when we got back home and the team depended on us even more as the team started to grow. At the time, I think our team was about 12 people and then we started to go from 12 to like 16 to 17 to eventually 30 people. And I think that we both have different moments where the penny dropped and we were like, okay, this is not sustainable anymore. What was that moment for you? Speaker 1 (4:20) There are a lot of moments. I think, you know, holidays is a good example of how we were constantly on at times where we felt like, you know, I just wish I could enjoy the moment. And you know that Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I love Christmas. And I remember one particular Christmas where mom had had major surgery, had come out of surgery. It was great. It was pretty close to Christmas. And I just felt so grateful that, you know, everything had gone well. She was with us at Christmas. And there was this moment where I was like, oh, you know, this time is so precious. But we had support staff still operating during Christmas hours because we were 24 Speaker 2 (5:00) -7. We were 24-7. Speaker 1 (5:02) We understood as a company and as a service software that provided a service around the world that, you know, not everyone is celebrating Christmas at the same time. People who are using our service, our customers would be on at that time. So of course we're going to be able to deliver, you know, customer support, even if it was reduced. And I just thought, oh, how many more Christmases? I know it sounds a bit. dark or a bit depressing but how many more christmases am i going to have where i'm not fully present i'm my mind is somewhere else and it's you know in the support inbox it's worrying about my team making sure they're on even though we had amazing team it's just all these little things that kept coming up yeah Speaker 2 (5:40) 100 i think for me the penny dropped when we were doing an all hands meeting which is like the whole team got together on zoom and there were like 30 boxes like I think Daki mentioned it in an interview once, several pages of Zoom. And I started to realize that, why am I feeling so needed in this company? Why are people depending on me so much? We have so many people doing so much work. Why am I still on call? And I realized that nobody here is empowered to make decisions. Speaker 2 (6:16) At the end of the day, you and I are only ones making the decisions or like at the end of the day, when things get escalated or we need to make a call, you know, they come back to us. So that's going to happen several times a day, seven, you know, seven days a week. So I think that's when the penny dropped for us and we made a hire. And I think that first hire is really important to kind of start shifting the responsibility. And I really think that you need to start thinking about who can start making decisions because really decisions is ownership. It's really like you own now a part of the decision making process and I don't need to worry about this anymore. And that first hire for us was Giuseppe, who's our CTO for the company and kind of took over the tech side and a lot of the managerial side of the business. Speaker 1 (7:01) So when you say our first hire, you're talking about someone, Giuseppe in that case, CTO, chief technology officer. He's at the level that we trust to make high level decisions. Yes. outside of us because like you said up until that point we thought oh we have to make all the key decisions so he was a key hire because we felt like he was an almost an equal really I Speaker 2 (7:24) think the reason why a lot of us I'm going to speak to this problem I think a lot of us we have this dependency or the sorry the company depends on us because we believe that we are like the best person for this job Speaker 1 (7:37) and Speaker 2 (7:38) I think a lot of us, we look at the team that we're hiring, we feel like, oh, nobody's going to be able to do this. And the honest truth is that you're just not hiring high talent people, right? When we found Giuseppe and we're willing to pay his price, we realized, oh, this guy's very talented. We were just like not trying to