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Because a business that cannot thrive without the owner personally being there has limited long-term growth potential. And it demonstrates that the owner is still thinking like an employee, not a business owner.
There's nothing wrong with you choosing to work in your practice three or four days a week, especially if you are the main optometrist or dispensing optician. But the more time you spend doing tasks within the practice, the less time you have to step back and look at how the business is growing. This is the difference between working in the business and working on the business.
The most successful practice owners I know spend more time working on their business - developing the marketing and improving the service - than they do seeing clients and working in the business.
The problem is that when you first buy a practice, it's too easy to do everything yourself. You gladly swap your time to save money. Early on in the life of a business this is the right thing to do. Working 18 hours a day, six days a week doesn't matter in the first few years, does it?
But years down the line, that early work ethic has become a nasty habit. And one which holds back the practice from achieving advanced growth.
Why does this happen? My work with practice owners suggests it is really a mindset issue. Many of us worked for someone else before we bought or started a practice. And the mindset of the successful business owner is totally different to the mindset of the employee.
Someone with an employee mindset is driven by hopes and fears. They delegate ultimate responsibility for their security (and often happiness) to someone else. They blame others for things that go wrong. They are prepared to let things happen to them.
Someone with a business owner mindset is driven by creating freedom - be that financial freedom or the ability to do what they want, when they want. The business owner takes overall responsibility for everything, whether it's something they can control or not. They know that whatever they want, they have to make it happen.
The employee has bills and costs. The business owner has investments and returns.
The employee swaps time for money. They perceive this is the lowest risk way to earn a living. Wrong. The business owner may carry the risk of it all going wrong, but in having complete control, they are actually carrying less risk than the employee. The business owner does not place their happiness and financial security in someone else's hands. They take responsibility, and expect rewards to follow risks. They disconnect the link between time spent at work and the level of the reward.
Secret to success
Most importantly of all, someone with an employee mindset thinks small. They see others who are successful and think it is down to luck. They moan about lack of opportunity or having bad luck. The business owner mindset doesn't allow for luck. It knows that success is a mixture of hard work, great timing and persistence.
Someone with a business owner mindset knows that the most valuable use of their time is developing the business, not being a slave to it.
This is not an easy transition to make, believe me. I realised shortly after I bought my first practice that I had carried my employee mentality into my new business. That was a key moment for me, because I then set in motion a series of events that allowed me to triple the turnover of that practice without me having to personally be there to make it happen.
The time I freed up was invested in starting my second practice. I got both these practices to a position where just before I sold them, I was doing one day's dispensing a week - by choice. I did it because I enjoyed dispensing, not because I had to be there.
So, have a good look at what you have done in your practice over the last few days. If you were the one who opened up every morning, who changed the light bulbs, who swept the floor outside the shop, then you are spending too much time working in the business.
Get out. Go sit in Costa Coffee for a morning, with your phone switched off. If your staff can't get hold of you they will eventually realise that they can fix client problems without you. And that gives you some valuable space to do something much more important than fight fires. Plan and execute great marketing to grow your business over the next 12 months. ?
? Richard Pakey is the founder of Independent Practice Growth UK, a practice growth and marketing organisation. He is the author of It's Time To Fight Back, now owned by more than 2,300 UK practice owners. You can get a free copy of his book at www.freeopticiansbook.com