Your Job Is to Become Replaceable

Here's my goal with every job I've ever had: I want to be able to quit at any time. I've never been one to stay in one job for too long - I thrive on change, doing new things, learning new things. It's one of the reasons I love my job as founder / CEO - it changes every few months as Rewind grows.

That sounds strange coming from a founder. But I think it's actually the key to building something that scales.

Early on at Rewind, our support person answered a customer question incorrectly. My instinct was to jump in and fix it. Just reply to the customer myself. Problem solved.

But I knew that wasn't going to scale. I couldn't be the one replying to customers - that wasn't my job.

So instead of fixing the answer, I asked myself: why didn't she know the right response? We had trained her. She'd learned the product. She'd learned the systems. If she got it wrong, it wasn't her fault. There was something in our training that wasn't correct.

That was my fault, not hers.

So I worked on fixing that problem - defining how we wanted things to be answered, making sure she had all the right knowledge, documenting how things worked etc...

When given the choice, I don't want to fix the issue - I want to fix the system around it. I want to fix the processes so that everybody makes sure it doesn't happen again - not just me. To me that's fundamental to how you scale.

This means I've had to develop some uncomfortable habits.

I have often watched Rewind break - on purpose. I'll notice something's wrong and just let it go. I'll let a customer issue go through the process and see how we handle it. I run experiments where I just don't step in - a prospect looking for more information on our product for example.

You can't always step in to fix everything. That's not how you're going to scale your business. Sometimes you have to let it go and watch and see what happens.

The same thing applies in meetings. Early on, I was talking a lot. Asking a lot of questions. Leading everything. That's just me - I can't sit still and not speak.

Now? I've had to learn to shut up. I let other people ask the questions. I let them step in and take the lead. I don't want the reputation where everyone thinks, "Well, Mike will handle it."

So often in meetings now, I'm just sitting there biting my tongue, waiting for other people to talk.

Building a business is a team effort. And if the team can't function without you stepping in, you haven't built a company. You've built a job for yourself. And if you're like me, not one that you want.

Build processes. Build structure. Build systems that work when you're not there.

Because the goal isn't to be irreplaceable. The goal is to build something that doesn't need you at all.