Posted by u/burnt_out_founder
How do I actually stop working IN the business?
Answered by Ask a Shop Owner ·
Everyone says work ON not IN. I do not know what that means when the phone keeps ringing and I am the only one who can quote.
u/askashopowner Owner-operator advisor
Top answer
Pick one seat to leave first. Not all of them. The order that works: production, then sales, then admin, then quoting. Owners try to leave quoting first and it never works, because quoting is where price discipline lives.
Write the SOP for the seat you are leaving before you hire. Not after. If you cannot write down how you do it in 20 pages, you do not understand it well enough to hand off.
Then hire someone 20% better than the job requires and pay them 10% above market. Cheap hires cost you the whole reason you wanted out.
Ask a Shop Owner writes these threads to help owner-operators find real answers on the web. Nothing here is scraped from Reddit. Every answer is grounded in the same operator library that powers the Ask a Shop Owner chat product.