Hi, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. This is Season five We're talking about consulting advice. And one piece of advice that I know you've probably heard is you've got to replace yourself in your business in order to grow. And what does it really mean to replace yourself? So I'm going to talk today about what that really means, the reasons consultants hesitate to do so and how you can do so in a way that is going to make you happier and help you to grow your business.

So when I was thinking about this, I was recalling that expression that they used to say, you know, if you're irreplaceable, you can never get fired and that's, you know, kind of a job mentality. And then over the years, I heard kind of a version of it that was, if you're irreplaceable, you can never get promoted and so you know irreplaceability is actually related to a scarcity mentality, it's like, I'm going to hang on to this thing because look, there's no expansion, there's no future, there's no change coming. And this is, I think, really closely related to replacing yourself in the business. There's kind of a scarcity mentality of like, well, if I replaced myself, then what will I do? And believe me, you will have plenty to do even if you're not doing all of the things that you're doing right now.

So the idea of replacing yourself is that there are strategic initiatives you could focus on and there are all kinds of things that you can focus on doing in order to grow the business that aren't the kind of day to day mundane details or delivery pieces that you're doing right now. And my clients who have done this piece have usually been in the two 50s to seven fifty and they've replaced themselves about that time and then they've seen the business double. So if that's something that is appealing to you, then I'd love for you to listen with an open mind to what it might mean to replace yourself in the business.

In an expert business, what people are often buying is you. So even if you have a team, you are going to feel like I'm the driver of this business and you're right, you're probably the face of the business and the face of the brand and what people buy is you. So you have the opportunity as that brand owner, you know, the face of the brand to confer authority on others who come into the business, on others who are fulfilling work for clients, on others who, you know, maybe are seen by the clients in other roles that aren't directly delivery. So keep in mind that you can do anything you want in that role as long as you're intentional and clear about its purpose relative to your clients.

So one reason that consultants don't replace themselves is just plain ego, they're like my clients love me and they're really attached to me and, you know, if I were to not be the center of it, they'd probably fade away and you know, that's just not true. The clients want results and even though they do love you, I'm sure, and they do love working with you, if you brought in someone else and said, as I've often done, hey, so-and-so is my copywriter and she's going to be working with you directly and she does amazing work, she's actually a much better writer than I am. And so here you let's take it from here. No one has ever said, oh, I'd actually rather just do this with you, they've said, oh ok, we'll go and do that. And then they come back to me and let me know how that went and it's just fine.

So you can, as I said, elevate someone else in their eyes, kind of, you know, confer your blessing onto them as a bonafide expert in your business and a substitute for you, proxy for you in this case and they will work with them. So even though clients love you, they're still ok working with others who can help them get results.

The next one is related and that's kind of the only I mentality. Well, only I know how to do this and only I can do blah, blah, blah. Well, that's just the scarcity mentality and it's I'm sure not true, I'm sure there are things that only you do, but everything that you're doing doesn't need to be done by you, I assure you.

So the phrase that I like to use in this sense is only do what only you can do. So our spiritual director, Jim Curtin, had said that to us one time and it really stood out only do what only you can do. So there are many things that you're doing that someone else can do, and you would probably be surprised at what someone else can do. I remember when I first taught my messaging course and I taught people how to do something that I thought was my, you know, magic trick, my secret sauce and they followed my instructions and their results turned out, you know, ninety nine point nine percent as good as what I would have done for them and I thought, hmm, what do you know? It turns out I don't have to be the only one who's doing that and I felt excited and liberated, it would have been easy to say, oh, my gosh, I'm out of a job. But instead, you know, that is only one portion of what I used to do and I've been able to evolve many other skills since that time. So it's not the case that only you can do these things in your business and the sooner you start to identify things that you don't enjoy doing, you don't feel like you're really that good at and finding someone else to do them, the quicker you're going to have the energy to pursue the growth of your business like you want to.

Another reason I see consultants struggle with replacing themselves is that they're just not good at teaching others to do the things that they do at delegating work to others or at hiring someone. Now, I talked about this last week in the ‘You Should Fire that Person’ episode. We really have to support and set people up for success and sometimes we have a little self sabotaging part of ourselves, which is like but if I really teach them how to do this, well, then they're going to replace me right. So we don't really want them to succeed but it's pretty easy to write down the things that you're doing and transfer those skills or in this case, specifically, just those activities to someone else and if they have a bit of skills, they can very often follow instructions and do those things. So be careful to clarify your intention, yes, I do want to have this person take this activity over and then set them up for success so that they can implement accordingly.

And the last reason consultants don't replace themselves is I think they have some sort of this je ne sais quoi quality about me, it's like, you know, there's something unique and special about you that's just impossible to replace again, yes, I'm sure there is, there totally is and that's not the thing you're going to replace, you're going to replace the tools and skills and abilities and functions that somebody else could do who isn't you, and that je ne sais quoi you were going to keep for yourself and you are going to apply that to other parts of your business that probably aren’t getting as much attention as they need to get

So the big transitional piece here that I want you to consider when you're ready to really replace yourself is to think of yourself rather than being the person who wears all the hats in the business and does all the jobs, I want you to become the orchestra conductor. So if you think about what an orchestra conductor does, they set a vision for the piece of music that they're going to be performing and then they work with the orchestra, the many different musicians, to have them bring the energy and the art and the nuance to that performance so that they achieve what they want to achieve, is this going to be a sad rendition or, you know, what's the what the message that we want to communicate in this? Like, how is this going to go? And then they work with the individual musicians and then on the day of performance, they are conducting that thing to get to realize the vision right? You're doing the same thing in your business, you're setting a vision for it, you're working with the individual deliverers of the work in your business so that you achieve what you want for your clients and for your own business, you know, in your brand marketing and your communications, you're achieving all those things and you're achieving them through others, your team, through your clients. So if you think of yourself as the orchestra conductor, you know, you don't dip in when someone's missing and go play the drums that day and you don't necessarily do like a violin solo, you have performers to do those things. And so if you think of yourself as like out of a job, if you replace yourself, then you're missing the fact that having the vision for the business and strategically growing it and creating relationships, you know, making connections, creating the content all of those things that again, only you can do. Think about those and imagine spending all day, every day doing them.

Now, one of the big things that people will tell me is like but I actually really do love working with my clients one on one some do some don't. So if that's the thing that you want to keep, remember, I'm not taking things away from you I want to put you at choice. You can keep choice clients, you can also take on all the clients that your team can handle without being limited to how much you can handle, which is wonderful. So if you meet someone and you feel like I could be driven crazy if I had to work with him, you might have a team member who is like, I love that guy, I got no problem with them, then you can say for yourself your choice perfect clients who are a fit for you. So replacing yourself with someone who can fulfill allows you to receive more work that's a fit for your brand, but maybe not literally a fit for you. So put yourself that choice that way.

I love for people to consider hiring two different things. So the first one is a mini me, so very often I'll say, how soon can you bring in a mini me? And when I say that, what I mean, I mean totally, respectfully, like somebody who is basically a junior mentee who is learning to do exactly what you do. So I teach this a lot to companies who deliver trainings or in-person things with clients, because that tends to be really hard on a consultant that those kind of travel hours and in person hours and so if you can train someone else who can come in and deliver trainings or do the facilitation or be on site in your place, that can really reduce the wear and tear on the consultant person, so consider hiring a mini me.

You can also work yourself out of, especially if you're very consumed by the delivery. Hiring a mini me can help you to work yourself out of a lot of the delivery, you bring that person in, they're working beside you for a while, they get the hang of it, they can take over from there and then suddenly you have the opportunity to breathe, first of all, and then do a lot of the things which sometimes get neglected in a business, when people come to me, it's not necessarily because they don't have enough clients or they're not earning enough or they don't making enough. The reason most people come to me is because they are slammed with client work and they can't grow because there's nowhere to put it, that's why we talk about this strategy, so I love hiring a mini me.

The other thing I love to hire is a yin to ye yang. So someone who is a complement to you so their skills, like all the stuff they're good at, is like almost the opposite of all the things that you're good at but basically they can do the same role as you. So in a lot of cases, you let's say you're doing human resources piece but more of the leadership development and the soft skills, whereas they're doing like the compliance and the legal and the things like that job description, stuff like that, so they are kind of very concrete and, you know, a little more left brained and you're more right brained with the people, things and things like that. So that's a very good replacement to bring in because they're an augmentation and not a strict replacement.

A good thing to be doing on the way to this, of course and I mentioned this last week, and I've mentioned this in all the team episodes, is codifying your process, turning it into a system, writing it up as SOPs, which are, you know, my term for just basically a recipe like here's what you do first and then second and third and fourth. If you can have that part done, then you can bring in as many people as you need to be just fulfilling that stuff, because they're basically just following processes that are known. And if you don't have those developed, you can bring someone in and their job number one is to pull this information out of your brain and put it into S.O.P.s for you, standard operating procedures for you, and then to help begin to implement it. So the actual replacement process can be the formalizing of a lot of things that, you know, maybe were not that formalized before.

As I said, my clients who are doing this have had businesses that are, you know, $500, $750,000, they've had a few team members but that crucial piece of the owner getting out of the delivery where it's a very intensive delivery so that they can do more to grow the business. This piece getting these systems and processes down in every aspect of the business is really important and, you know, as the owner, you are very often, no matter how much team you have, you're very often the chief marketing officer, the chief H.R. hiring officer, obviously the CEO, but you're the chief sales like you're doing all of those roles and so it's really helpful if you think about replacing yourself, that you're replacing the components of the work and not yourself, which is, again, you've got je ne sais quoi that the client's love and that piece will always be there, even if you're not literally in the day to day working with them.

So what will end up being replaced in many cases is done for you, if you have been doing work for clients, you've got to hire somebody who can do that implementation had a client who was writing the job descriptions and writing the, you know, building up the departments and things like that, that's the thing that you can hire for and so you're not doing that kind of delivery. And honestly, any kind of delivery, you should be out of that business, so they’ve done for you work that I have in my business most of the time I'm engaging with a client in the strategy piece, which is what I would rarely give away if I were you if it's probably your gift. So the advice piece, the strategy piece, you're doing that with a client and then all of the implementation is done by team.

Remember my favorite quote, the business does the work, not me. If you're doing delivery, you're going to get lost in gory details it's pulling you down to work that could be done by someone else. Now, if you are an amazing artist and you coming in and doing this incredible design is the key benefit why people hire you ok, that's fine and it could be design or a message or something like do your piece but there's remember, there's all the pieces around that, that don't need to be done by you. So don't hang onto things just because you believe only I can do them remember that you can be surprised and other people can do them.

Keep that advice, keep the client connection, not the client admin, but the client connection, those pieces that energize you and again, dispense with any of that if it doesn't energize you. And just remember, you can grow your business, you can have a joyful, growing business, but you can't do it if you're stuck in gory details and you'll know what those are for you, it's out of your joy and genius zone so that means that you feel like it's a little bit hard, your genius zone are things that are effortless for you. So if things are hard, that is not going well or if you feel like this is draining my energy, those are clues as to what you should give away. And I am sure, as I've been talking today, you've been hearing that's the thing that I got to get rid of, that's the thing that I don't need to be doing and I can replace that part of my job and eventually you can replace yourself, you can become CEO, conductor of the symphony and have a profitable and joyful business imagine if you'd like any help with that, this is what I help my clients to do so that they can double their businesses without exhaustion and you know where to find me, stay in touch.