How to run your business from your mobile phone

As an entrepreneur, your goal should always be financial freedom. If it weren't, you might as well work as an employee.

But financial freedom means much more than just being able to buy nice things. First and foremost, it's about the second word: freedom. If you're a successful entrepreneur and work 40, 50, 60 or more hours every week, you have a lot of money, but little freedom, little free time. 

You are chained to your business by a golden chain. But the times we live in offer you numerous opportunities to break out of this. Imagine this: You run your business from your smartphone, and you have a lot more time to focus on the really important things in life. Does that sound tempting?

To achieve this goal, you need to meet three requirements. In this article, you'll learn how to do that - and how to run your business from your mobile phone. 

Requirement 1: Employees

It's easier to run a multimillion-dollar company than to do everything yourself. This may sound paradoxical at first, but it is true. If you have a team and your company has clear processes and structures, everything runs much more smoothly. 

If, on the other hand, you are still a lone fighter, then try the following experiment. Set an alarm clock that rings every 15 minutes and write down what you are doing at that time. After a day or two, you'll realize that you're wasting way too much time on unimportant things that you, as the CEO, really shouldn't be doing. 

The so-called vacation test is valuable as well. You can do this experiment only if you already have a constant turnover and some employees. Go on vacation for a week or two and see how your company manages without you. Even if everything doesn't run perfectly, the vacation test will give you valuable insights into those aspects of your business that work - as well as those that still need to be improved so that you can control it from your smartphone in the future. 

Requirement 2: Remote working

Design internal operations as if the entire company were remote. In other words, communication between your employees must be fully digitized or automated. Everything must be systematized in such a way that no problems arise, even in the event of a lockdown, for example. 

Provide your employees with software solutions that allow them to communicate digitally. Popular solutions include Slack and Google Drive. Implement automated processes that make manual communication - whether digital or in-person - obsolete. For example, if a salesperson closes a sale, the invoice should be automatically forwarded to accounting.

Creating a remote workplace brings several benefits at once. For one, your business now functions in a much more efficient manner. Second, it's scalable - as only processes can scale. Third, and most important for the purpose of this article: By setting up internal communications remotely, you set the stage for eventually working remotely yourself - with your smartphone and from wherever you want.  

Requirement 3: Clear business process

As a CEO, you need to have confidence in your people and in the processes you build. Without trust, you won't be able to give up constant control and run your business from your smartphone, regardless of location. 

To establish this trust, you need to create clear business processes. Everything that happens within your company is a process - or it should be. Each process is set into action by a specific trigger (e.g., a call from a potential customer). The process tells you exactly what to do, and at the end of the process stands a clearly defined goal (e.g., close the sale). 

Make sure the processes are repeatable and scalable. Think big: If you currently serve 50 customers, the business processes you set up should be big enough for 500 customers. 

Establishing clear business processes is not only the ultimate requirement for running your business from your smartphone - it's also an indispensable foundation for scaling your business later on.

What remains?

What tasks will remain once you have met these three requirements and are running your business from your smartphone? First and foremost, you'll be dealing with the following four tasks. They represent much less work than you had before - and at the same time, they are the most important tasks you have as a CEO. You minimize your workload and maximize the impact you have on your business.

1. Controlling: You feel the pulse of your company and regularly check whether all processes are functioning optimally. You can do this task from anywhere. Use a software solution that shows you the most important figures about your company in real time on your smartphone.

2. Managing managers: This task is also easy, especially if your company already has processes that guide your employees and managers. Because at the end of the day, your business doesn't need to be managed by you, it needs to be managed by systems.

3. Hiring: Hiring new employees is essential for growth. That's why, as a business owner, you should put a lot of emphasis on it. But allow yourself to be helped. Recruiters interview and send you a selection of the best candidates. All you have to do is decide.

4. Making decisions: Similar to hiring new employees, it's all about making a decision at the end of a given process. This means that, ideally, you will be presented with several options by the people responsible for them - and all you have to do is choose the best one.

In general, you now have more time to work on the company instead of in the company. You can spend more time on the vision and the long-term goals, and you don't have to be bogged down with tasks that can be done just as well (or maybe better) by employees or automated processes.

Conclusion

You now have a three-step guide to achieving the big goal of financial freedom. Hiring employees makes you obsolete. Build your business as if it were 100 percent remote. Implement clear business processes that automate the operations of your business and allow you to remove yourself from the day-to-day operations as much as possible.

You now have more freedom, your employees can rely on clear processes and systems, and your customers benefit from the improved service as well.