The Holy Grail of Business: How I Mastered Absentee Ownership

There's something most business books won't tell you: most business owners don't own a business. They own a job.

A job they can't call in sick to. A job they can't take vacation from. A job that demands more hours than any regular employment ever would.

I know because I've been there. Multiple times.

But I've also figured out the other way. The way where you build something that runs smoothly while you're free to do something else—start another venture, spend time with family, or just enjoy life.

I call it absentee ownership, and it's the holy grail of entrepreneurship.

The Trap Most Owners Fall Into

Let me paint a picture. Maybe you'll recognize it.

You start a business because you're good at something. You're a great plumber, a talented designer, an incredible baker. People start paying you for your skill.

Then it grows. Now you need help. So you hire someone. But they're not as good as you, so you're constantly fixing their work.

You hire more people. Now you're managing instead of doing. But nobody makes decisions as well as you do, so you're answering questions all day.

The business gets bigger. You're not doing the craft anymore—you're putting out fires, handling complaints, negotiating with vendors, interviewing candidates, staying late to catch up on the "real work."

Congratulations. You've built a prison. And you're the only one with a key, so you can never leave.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Here's what took me years to understand: Your job as a business owner is to make yourself unnecessary.

Not dispensable. Not unimportant. Unnecessary.

The business should be able to function—ideally thrive—whether you're there or not. That's the difference between owning a business and owning a job.

Most owners resist this idea. Their ego is wrapped up in being needed. "Nobody knows the business like I do." "My customers expect to see me." "My employees can't function without my input."

Maybe that's all true. But as long as it's true, you're stuck.

The Systems That Set You Free

Over 100+ businesses, I've refined a system for building companies that run themselves. Here's the framework:

1. Document Everything (And I Mean Everything)

If a process exists only in your head, you don't have a business—you have a dependency.

Every single thing that happens in your business should be documented. How do you answer the phone? How do you handle a complaint? How do you order inventory? How do you close a sale?

When I build a new business now, we write the operations manual as we go. Every time we figure out how to do something, it gets documented. By the time we're up and running, there's a playbook for everything.

"But my business is too complex for that." No, it isn't. You just haven't broken it down small enough. Any task can be documented if you're willing to get specific.

2. Hire for Judgment, Not Just Skill

Most hiring is backwards. We look for people who can do the tasks we need done. That's table stakes.

What you really need are people who can make decisions the way you would make them—even when you're not there to ask.

That means hiring for values and judgment, not just skills. Skills can be taught. Decision-making ability is much harder to develop.

Every time an employee asks me, "What should I do about X?"—I don't just give them the answer. I explain my reasoning. Why I would make that choice. What factors I'm weighing. Over time, they learn to think like an owner. That's when you know you've got someone who can run things without you.

3. Build Feedback Loops

You can't be hands-off if you don't know what's happening. Absentee ownership doesn't mean ignorant ownership.

I have dashboards for every business I run. Daily numbers. Weekly trends. Monthly reviews. I can see at a glance if something is off.

But here's the key: I'm looking at outcomes, not activities. I don't care what time my employees show up as long as the work gets done and customers are happy. I don't micromanage the process; I monitor the results.

If results are good, I stay out of the way. If results slip, I dig in and figure out why. That's managing by exception, and it's the only way to scale yourself.

4. Accept 80% (At First)

This is the hardest one for most owners. Your people will not do things as well as you do. At least not at first.

If you demand perfection, you'll never let go. You'll always be fixing, tweaking, redoing.

Instead, accept 80%. If someone can do the job 80% as well as you can, that's good enough. Your job is to train them to get better over time, not to do it for them.

Besides, your 100% effort on one task might be worse than their 80% effort on five tasks. Your time isn't well-spent doing work others could do adequately. It's well-spent on the things only you can do.

5. Create Redundancy

In any of my businesses, if one person quits, the business doesn't stop. There's always someone else who knows the critical processes. There's always a backup.

This isn't about distrust. It's about resilience. People get sick. People leave. People have emergencies. A business that depends on any single person—including you—is fragile.

Build redundancy into everything. Cross-train employees. Document institutional knowledge. Have backup vendors. This isn't paranoia; it's professionalism.

The Life on the Other Side

I want to tell you what it's like once you've built businesses this way. Because it's worth the effort.

I wake up when I want. I work on what interests me. I travel without checking my email every five minutes. I spend time with my family—real time, not distracted time.

When one of my businesses has a problem, I deal with it. But problems are the exception, not the rule. Most days, the businesses run, the revenue comes in, and I'm free to think about what's next.

This is what I mean when I say family is the key to life. I've built wealth through business. But the real wealth? It's having time. Time for the people who matter. Time for the life you actually want to live.

The Catch

There's a catch to all of this, of course. Building businesses that run themselves requires a different skill set than just being good at your craft.

You have to learn to lead. To document. To delegate. To trust. To build systems.

These are learnable skills. I learned them the hard way—through 46 years of trial and error, through businesses that trapped me before I figured out how to escape.

You don't have to take 46 years. You can learn from someone who's already made the mistakes.

That's what I do now. I help entrepreneurs build businesses that serve their lives instead of consuming them. It's not easy work, but it's the most important work.

Because what's the point of building something if you become its prisoner?

---

Ready to build a business that gives you freedom instead of chains? Let's talk about what that would look like for you. I've done it over 100 times. Let me show you how.