What If You Could Duplicate Yourself?
Debra Cohen
www.homeownersreferral.com
Imagine yourself as the owner of a thriving home based business. Your phone is ringing off the hook and there is a much greater demand for your product or service than you had anticipated. Soon, there are not enough hours in the day to complete all of the work and your business is taking valuable time away from your family (which was one of the reasons you decided to work from home in the first place!). It is a nice problem to have but what do you do?
Many home based business owners are faced with that exact problem. While it's thrilling to see your business succeed, it's sometimes impossible to keep up the pace when you're the only employee. Ultimately, the quality of your service or product may suffer not to mention the toll that a home based business can take on your family life.
The solution isn't to work harder; it's to 'duplicate yourself' so that other people can be trained to work like you. Convert your existing business into an easy to follow, step-by-step procedure manual. By systemizing the way that you work and documenting your business procedures, you can then market your business as a turnkey system for others to follow. And, with other satellite businesses like yours in place, you'll be able to refer work to them as opposed to trying to manage it all on your own.
Six years ago, I launched a contractor referral business and within six months, had more clients than I could handle. If I continued to try to satisfy the workload, the quality of my service would have suffered, not to mention, my family life. I realized that not only was there a universal demand for my business service but other entrepreneurs were interested in a referral business concept so I decided to document my system so that others could duplicate this type of service in their area.
If you think that there is a market for your business concept, the first step is to test the market. For instance, assuming that your business will appeal to other stay-at-home moms, conduct an informal market survey online and/or in local papers or magazines which are well read by other moms. You can run a short ad promoting your business opportunity and gauge the response. If there's an interest be sure to keep the names of those who contact you for future reference (of course!).
Once you're confident that there's a demand for your business model it's time to start systemizing your business and documenting each step in detail. Take note of your day-to-day procedures, billing, customer service policy, advertising and promotion, public relations campaign as well as any insurance and licensing issues pertaining to your business. You should even tape record conversations with customers and suppliers so that you can document them in easy to follow dialogues for others to use as a guide. Imagine your reader to be a first time business owner with no previous experience and it's your job to teach them everything about your business from how to set up a home office to how to complete a cash flow statement.
After documenting your procedures, select someone who isn't acquainted with your business to read through your manual. Your familiarity with your business may have caused you to overlook aspects of running it that need to be explained more clearly to a layperson. You can hire a business consultant to help you with the process or look into free business resources such as SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) or a local SBDC (Small Business Development Center). That person can also help you determine how to creatively package and set a price for your business product based on earning potential not to mention the quality of your materials.
Finally, when your business manual is edited, bound and ready for sale, it's time to start promoting it to your target audience. Begin with the list of names you put together in step one and then expand to other media which are well read by aspiring entrepreneurs looking for a home based business.
Duplicating yourself, and ultimately your business, will not only allow you to divest yourself of the work you're unable to handle but it will also help expand the profit center of your business. Best of all, it will enable you to share your home business success with other aspiring entrepreneurs.
Debra Cohen is President of Home Remedies of NY, Inc.--a Homeowner Referral Network (HRN) which has served more than 500 residents of Nassau County, New York. Ms. Cohen is also author of a business manual entitled
The Complete Guide To Owning And Operating A Successful Homeowner Referral Network
, which is sold individually or as part of an HRN Business Package. To date, Ms. Cohen has assisted more than 225 other entrepreneurs launch successful HRN's all over the globe. For more information about starting an HRN in your area, visit the HRN website at
www.homeownersreferral.com
or contact Ms. Cohen directly at (516) 374-8504. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com
