Can You Take a Week Off From Your Business?

Apr 23

Welcome to the Dave vs. Startups.

If your business falls apart when you take a week off...

Then you don't have a business.

You have a demanding job.

Here are the 3 systems I built that let me step away (and eventually sell my company):

I built a bootstrapped B2B SaaS company in public safety from $0 to exit.

But before I figured out these systems, I was doing everything myself.

Working crazy hours.

The first system you need:

Customer acquisition that doesn't depend on you.

Early on, I was doing all the sales myself.

I had to be in every meeting with CTOs of billion-dollar companies.

Because I was the only one who could sell the vision.

And because a 25-year-old account executive can't have those high-level conversations.

But it was my fault, actually.

The real problem was I hadn't built a clear, repeatable sales process they could follow.

So here's what I did:

I built structured sales materials, demo flows and documentation for my team.

Basically, I systematized the sales process so I no longer needed to be in every deal.

Second system: Scalable service & operations.

I used to handle every customer issue personally.

And my customers loved it, but I became the bottleneck.

The business couldn't grow past my capacity.

So I started hiring people from hospitality, former waiters and restaurant managers.

Because they were masters at handling tough situations, prioritizing urgent needs, and managing multiple demands.

But I didn't just hire them and hope for the best.

I had them study how I handled things, then build systems and processes to scale that level of service.

Third system:

A team that can run without you.

My wake-up call was when my entire team quit.

I had failed to build the proper systems and decision-making frameworks.

I was the bottleneck for every decision. That's not scalable.

The fix wasn't complicated:

When you give people the tools to succeed, they usually do.

These systems aren't flashy.

But these are the differences between:

Build these first.

Otherwise, you'll waste time on non-needle-movers.

Thanks for reading!
Dave

David Sinkinson

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