Is making yourself nonessential the key to a schools Legacy?

Chris (00:00):
With the summit’s theme of legacy. Jared, take it away, man. Awesome. Thank you so much, Chris, for inviting me to speak again and stuff, and it’s been an awesome day, super packed with a lot of information and it’s good to be here again. I hope that everybody is not turning off and saying another session on numbers, but I also wanted to offer my word for the day, and I apologize to anybody that’s a fluent Dutch speaker, but today’s word for me was Koo, which I probably slaughtered the pronunciation, but it’s cookie comfort or in other words, an emotional support cookie. So if you didn’t win one of the giveaways, I offer you a virtual cook Andrus.

Jared (00:51):
Let me share my screen so I can get this up. All right. So when Chris messaged me and said, Hey, would you like to come back and talk and stuff like that, I immediately think, oh, what more could I bring about numbers and stuff like that. And really then when he said, Hey, it’s about legacy, it got me thinking about could we take a little bit different direction than we normally have? So what I thought I’d do is talk to you about a concept that actually hit me pretty hard. About six months ago, I was in another conference, was listening to somebody talk about a situation that they had gone through, and he made a comment that I thought was just really crazy. He said, my goal as an owner of my CPA firm is to make myself obsolete. And I thought, wow, that’s kind of crazy because I’m really important as the owner, I make all the good decisions I’m leading.

(01:52):
Why would you want to prepare or plan or send out this concept that your whole goal in your life each day is to make yourself useless when it comes to the firm? But it got me thinking about legacy and what is the legacy that you’re going to leave from a school standpoint? What legacy are you going to leave to your school? What legacy are you going to leave to your community? And how do we do this in a way that it is smooth, but also in a way that that legacy continues forward as you walk out of this school? So we’re going to talk about a few different areas. We’re going to talk about preparing for a lasting legacy. We’re going to talk about transitioning out gracefully and building a self-sustaining school. So my goal for this session is not to provide you with answers.

(02:49):
So I hope that you’re not looking at this and saying, I am really hoping to get a laundry list of things that Jared suggests that I need to be doing. But really my hope is that you’re writing down questions that you need to be asking yourself. And this isn’t necessarily like we have people that are looking around the corner saying, I’m ready to step out. I’m tired of the crazy environment. Who knows what’s going on with the Department of Education and stuff to people that are like, you know what? I’m in the prime of my career.

(03:24):
It’s always a good time to start thinking about these things. And one of the things that really came up about what this other CPA firm owner said was like, look, I’m not trying to leave my firm, but I am trying to be able to have a vacation that’s decent. I’m trying to have a team that feels empowered, and I feel that the best way to do that from an ownership standpoint is to get out of the weeds and be able to lead and allow the school or the firm to grow, and in this case, the school to grow and perform without being so reliant upon one individual. So by implementing these strategies, we’re hoping to transform your beauty school into a thriving self-sustaining institution that we’ll continue to grow and serve the community for whatever time period you have left in your school versus time after you’ve left your school.

(04:23):
So let me just, great quote that I love about legacy from Maya Angelou is legacy is not about us. It’s about what we leave behind. I love this because it kind of changes. A lot of times we sit and we think about legacy as being, what did I do versus what did I change? I’m a big basketball fan. And so when you think about, for example, Michael Jordan’s legacy, yes, the way he played the game was transformational. You could look at all of his stats and stuff like that, but what really to me allows Michael Jordan’s legacy to expand is the way that he changed the game. So yes, he has the stats. Yes, he performed, but he changed the way basketball was played. A more modern example would be Steph Curry. Yeah, he’s setting records for the number of threes made and stuff like that.

(05:21):
But when you look at his impact on the game, it’s changing offensive schemes. It’s changing player development. It’s changing the way that kids play from the NBA to college high school all the way down to the neighborhood courts. He’s completely changing the way that basketball is played, and that’s going to be his legacy. It’s going to go way beyond his involvement. When he steps away from the game, you’re not going to see any more three point shots from Steph Curry, but you will see the effect that he had in that industry. And that to me is the truly powerful aspect of legacy. So let me ask a question. How well does your school operate when you aren’t there? Is it a well-oiled machine or is it a dumpster fire?

(06:14):
Sometimes I feel like my firm is a well-oiled dumpster fire, and sometimes I feel like, okay, we’re doing pretty good, but this gives you a really good indication of how well does your screen or how well does your school, how well does it function when you’re not there to fill the gaps, make all of the little decisions? Stuff like that gives you a great idea about where your people are at in terms of being able to own all of the responsibility and the things that they need to. So as we talk about transitioning and succession planning, there’s a couple things that we often see where it creates issues in terms of selling your school. The first one is just that the owner is involved and responsible for too many tasks. What happens is you have an owner that is going through and so much of it is on their shoulders that when that owner goes to step away, there’s not a clear picture of who’s doing what.

(07:24):
The buyer comes in and they’re scrambling to fill all of those gaps and stuff like that or things you’re talking about. The owner becomes so much of the vision of the school and the perception of the school that when they leave, it completely dismantles the structure and what’s going on with the school. The other side of it is that the school is not financially sound without the owner. For most owners, it’s your blood, sweat and tears, and so it’s less about what you’re making per hour, but about having that product and stuff like that. But when you step away and a school has to bring somebody else in, they got to pay for the people that are going to fill those roles and stuff like that. And it becomes very difficult when you’re looking at the structure of a school to say, okay, that school is financially sound.

(08:16):
I want to invest in, I want to buy this school because it’s generating cashflow, it’s doing well, and stuff like that. When that cash flow is artificially being inflated because the owner is doing a lot of things that they’re eventually going to have to hire something. So part of this is just in this transition side of is putting you in a better position so that when you do sell your school or transition to another generation, that there’s not that huge disruption of things. So I want to break it into three different areas in terms of building a self sustain school. We want to at delegating the responsibilities, we want to look at documenting your processes and then fostering a strong team. So in this process, we’re looking at it and saying, okay, what am I doing as an owner? What are my roles? What are my responsibilities?

(09:13):
What are the things that I’m handling that somebody else is going to have to do when I’m gone? Then looking at it and saying, okay, what does that process look like? How can I enable a team member to come in and fulfill that responsibility if they don’t have guidance on how exactly that should be handled? And then the second one is just fostering that strong team. So we talk about delegating responsibilities. We want to identify the key roles that you perform. So look at it, make that list writee down and just say, what are the things that if that end up on my desk that nobody else has the responsibility or the authority to make a decision in this particular area? Then you want to document your responsibilities, that key role, the specific tasks, duties, the decision-making authority. Then we want to step back and we want to say, okay, who could I delegate this responsibility to?

(10:14):
Who on my team would be a good person to start to develop the ability and authority to take over that responsibility? You may want to consider cross-training your staff. So making sure that there are different staff members that actually know what’s going on, know those areas enough to at least answer questions and make sure that they’re doing it. And this is the timeframe and area where you begin to start to empower your employees. So fostering a culture in your management team to allow them to take an area, own that little area, make the decisions and develop the strength and the confidence to this. A long time ago, I had a staff member, phenomenal. She’s actually our financial audit manager now, but she just gotten her CPA, moved over to the audit team and would come to me constantly about questions about the audit and stuff like that.

(11:12):
And I finally said, look, candy, I’m just going to be honest, your CPA, now you have the ability, the authority to answer those questions. You know what you’re talking about and you can do it. If I see that you made the incorrect assumption or a change or decision that I would not necessarily agree with, we’re going to have a conversation about it and we’ll talk about it. But you need to feel confident and knowing that you can then make those decisions. So don’t just take a roll and dump it on someone expecting them to do the job. Exactly how you would do it. A great way to delegate is to allow that person you’re developing to respond to questions regarding the role. So for example, a lot of times people email me questions about audits and stuff like that. I had to quickly learn as I was developing my team to go ahead and let Ben or Candy or some other staff member respond to that and then just jump in when I feel like I need to guide that things.

(12:12):
But having your employees understand that they can own that area is great for growth and stuff like that to give them the nce. Now, you always want to monitor and adjust. You always want to look at and determine, is this person able to handle this? Are they doing well with the new authority or are they completely crumbling? Can I build up their things? Because you want to transition. The whole goal is to get you out of doing financial aid, out of doing accounting, out of doing the admin stuff, and really focus your role on developing and working with your management team to be awesome so that they can be awesome without you.

(12:55):
All right. So once you’ve established the roles and stuff like that, you want to document the process. Now, I never recommend file cabinets. It’s way in the past. This is what happens when you grab an AI thing, and it just made me laugh, but meticulously organizing your files with detailed processes and procedures online and stuff like that. So it can be a living document. It’s not something that’s stuck in a file cabinet from the 18 hundreds and stuff like that, but you want to make sure that you have your processes in place, that you have places for storage. Creating checklists for key operations is a great way. We do this internally where we step back and we say, okay, what went well? What was a train wreck? What can we do to make things smoother and stuff like that. So we pull out these different checklists and stuff and we go through it and say like, what is this still working from the checklist.

(13:52):
Then developing training manuals to be able to say, okay, how do I want to train this person? How do I want them to go from point A to point B? We’ve actually gone through this process of developing different staffing levels for our accountants and being able to step back and say, okay, what is the expectation of somebody that’s just starting this area all the way up to what’s our expectation for somebody that’s the best at that particular job? So the best auditor in financial, the best auditor in compliance, and walking through that process of saying, how do I get somebody that’s coming in that only knows college training of accounting, which is usually very limited and useless to somebody that can come in, perform an audit with minimal questions, submit a work paper package that flows through review and compliance and all of that stuff, and is very self-sufficient. So getting through this process of just saying, how do I need to get there? Then that allows you to take and look at your team and say, okay, they’re in this spot and I need them to be at this spot so that I can then give them those delegated tools to be able to handle that.

(15:10):
Next thing I want to do is just consider the team that you have. Okay. So just making sure that you have a great system in terms of identifying and saying, you know, how strong is my team? Where are my deficiencies and how can I strengthen those deficiencies? Making sure that there are clear roles and having an honest reflection of the skills, talents, and drive of your team is critical. Are the people that are in their respective individuals, do they have the vision that you’re trying to get in their particular area? Do they have the authority, the responsibility? Are they just waiting for you to tell them what to do? Or are they feeling a sense of this is an area that I can take and I can run with it? Do they know your vision? Do they know their future and do they own their area of responsibility?

(16:10):
Can be some great questions to step back to say like, am I building strength or am I building just a bunch of people that are extensions of me? The more that you can delegate, the more that you can push down onto those people and allow them to grow. It’ll bring back stronger staff retention, but it’ll also empower them if they feel like they’re part of the solution and part of the vision instead of just, Hey, every day I’m going to show up and I’m going to just do admissions every day, versus, Hey, I’m going to the school. We’re building this amazing school that’s going to be part of this lasting legacy within the community. Those types of perceptions of where they are is empowering for them in terms of knowing and understanding what you expect for ’em. All right, so I threw these up. These are not specifics or anything like that, but just measuring your success goes beyond just whether or not you’re profitable, whether or not students are graduating.

(17:19):
You can look at your student enrollment percents and stuff like that. Are we functioning well in those areas? But I also wanted you to expand your vision on what is my staff retention? Am I cycling through staff every two or three years? Why am I stifling through them? Is it because I’m not conveying good enough vision? Is there a discrepancy between perceived responsibility and actual responsibility? Is it a money issue where they’re not understanding how they bring or what kind of value they bring versus the value that you’re paying them? So taking and measuring your success in the non-financial, non-traditional ways can give you a better understanding of where exactly your school is from a transition ready standpoint. So wanting to look at that and saying, do we have all systems on go? Do we have all of these pieces in place? Because anytime that there is a transition, there’s going to create chaos.

(18:23):
But if you’re not very good at keeping staff and then you go and you try and sell or you do sell, and there’s an opportunity for people to reevaluate what their potential is, that becomes really hard for incoming ownership to do because they’ve got to grab those people, they got to give them a better vision and stuff like that. So measuring your success in different areas is a key to be able to say like, look, am I really ready? So to transition out gracefully, it’s not like you show up today and say, okay, I’m selling the school. I’ve had enough of it, and good luck with things. We want to be able to have this go through the whole process. So the first step, obviously, is to gradually reduce your involvement, reduce those responsibilities that are sitting on your desk so that your team is empowered, they’re instructed, they’re trained, they’re owning their areas that they go through.

(19:22):
Shifting from your involvement over to a mentor perception and really being able to evaluate how well are you developing your leadership team to be able to function without you is a great it’s self-reflective study to sit back and say, what kind of manager am I? What kind of owner am I? Am I one that can allow people to be excited and be happy about things? Or am I one of those where they’re there, they’re working, but it’s really just a job. So usually as you’ve provided that mentor successorship and stuff like that, that’s the point in time where you can then really consider transitioning in a way that will have your legacy stay intact, and then providing your ongoing support as you move beyond or outside of the school itself. So transforming your school into a thriving self-sustaining institution. It’ll allow you to transition out gracefully. It’ll ensure your school’s longevity and it’ll leave a lasting impact. So by implementing these strategies, you can transform your beauty school into a thriving self-sustaining institution.

(20:43):
So delegate responsibilities, documenting processes, fostering a strong team. You can build a school that can run without your presence, that the goal is to allow you to take a vacation. The goal is to allow you to know confidently that you’ve put the pieces in place that this school is going to last beyond your involvement is the key to a successful and smooth transition and a successful smooth transition legacy. Just like to thank everybody for checking in and stuff like that. Thank you, Chris. I’ve got a QR code. My contact information is in the chat, and we’d love if you have any questions, feel free to contact us. Yes, thank you, Jared. And let me just say LSA, they aim to make financial processes easier for schools like using cloud-based technology, experienced accountants helping schools make informed financial decisions, and.