Problem · Owner dependency
Too much still depends on you.
It caps how fast the business can grow, makes time away expensive, and quietly reduces what the company is worth to anyone who might buy it.
What it actually looks like
- Pricing exceptions come to you, every time.
- Staff wait on your approval to move a job forward.
- A customer asks for you by name and nobody else can answer.
- You come back from four days away to a queue, not a business.
- The answer to "why do we do it that way" is in your head.
- New hires take a year to become useful because nothing is written down.
What it costs
Founder capacity is the scarcest input in an owner-led business, and it is the one nobody puts on the P&L. It also shows up at exit: buyers discount hard for a company that stops working when the seller leaves.
Owner hours per week
52 weeks
Capacity the business cannot scale
An illustration of the calculation, not a promise of a result.
What changes
- Every exception routes to the owner.Rules cover the common exceptions; you see the rest.
- Knowledge lives in one head.Operating knowledge is written where the work happens.
- Approval is a text message.Approval is a step with a threshold and a record.
- Time away means a backlog.Time away means a summary.
How the audit finds it
- 01Which decisions actually reached you last month, and which of those needed you
- 02How long work waited on an approval
- 03What only you know, and what it would take to write it down
- 04Which relationships are personal to you rather than to the company
- 05What broke the last time you were unavailable
Find out what this is actually costing you.
Five questions, about a minute. If we are not the right fit, we will say so in the first reply.
Related: Missed leads · Disconnected systems