The Replaceable Founder

by Ari R. Meisel

Are you an entrepreneur mystified as to how to scale your business? Do you realize the solution is to make yourself replaceable? Does that question bring up any resistance? Well, then you are ready to dive into my latest book. “The Replaceable Founder” explores the dynamics of entrepreneurship world and explains how founders can capitalize on emerging trends to optimize, automate, outsource, and create truly sustainable businesses.You’ll be relieved to discover how simple and easy it is to relinquish control and cultivate a more productive mindset with this book. I’ll give you the tools to confidently optimize, securely automate, and effortlessly outsource the majority of your daily tasks for the greater good of your business. Author Ari Meisel wrote with exceptional articulation and clarity in the book, sharing practical, actionable methods on how entrepreneurs can build next level businesses through his proprietary OA Methodology. This book is a blueprint that will help you eliminate that “I got this” mentality so you can create your own path to professional and financial success, no matter the size of your business. Quite simply, It is filled with “right here, right now” tactics and processes that will show you how to build a better company. This is not a book that tells you a story about how to start a business, it is one of those rare practical guides that has the power to change any entrepreneur’s life. All Ari asks is that founders get out of their own way.

Genres: Business, Leadership

109 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2018

About the author

Ari Meisel is a self described, “Overwhelmologist” who helps entrepreneurs who have opportunity in excess of what their infrastructure can handle, to optimize, automate, and outsource everything in their business, so they can make themselves replaceable and scale their business.

Ari is the Founder of Less Doing, author of the best-selling book, “The Art of Less Doing”, and its sequel, the forthcoming “The Replaceable Founder”, coming this September.

He is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, an Ironman, and a devoted husband to Anna and father to four children, Ben, 6, Sebastien and Lucas, 4 and Chloe, 2.

When Ari Meisel was diagnosed with a severe case of the incurable digestive ailment known as Crohn’s disease, he quickly found himself in the hospital and soon thereafter on a host of medications. After hitting a truly low point, he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. Putting himself on a strict regiment of yoga, healthy eating, nutritional supplements and intense exercise, Meisel not only beat back the symptoms, he was in fact eventually declared cured of his "incurable" disease.

One of the outcomes of this log and difficult journey was the deep realization that he wanted to live his precious gift of healthy life much more fully. He quickly saw how much of his time was wasted by tasks that could just as easily be done by others. Thus was born his blog, the art of Less Doing, so that we all might have more living.

Reviews

[Sina]

I can't rate it since I read it with a developer point of view. It talks a lot about how a founder should behave to be a successful one. However along with its helpful comments for founders, there are a few other suggestions that would help anyone who want to be replaceable in anything. The word 'replaceable' means a lot to you after reading this book.

[Iman Shabani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. Some of the advice from the book are worth applying, as I'm trying to start doing just that.

I'm gonna need a more thorough read of this later on but for now my biggest takeaways from the book were" improving my delegate skills" and "finding my peak time".

[Héctor Iván Patricio Moreno · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've learned a lot about how to think like an optimized person and some of the steps to make myself replaceable and stop being the bottleneck in the processes I'm in.

I'm inspired to do 3 things:
- Understand thoroughly the process in my company
- Get them tight and optimize it
- Automate
- Bonus: Maybe outsource.

I admire so much the way of thinking of Ari. I hope I can apply his advice for being more productive soon, but overall I have understood that I need to change my way of thinking to be efficient.

Only one detail: the book needed an editor and proofreading because there are some grammatical inconsistencies.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Founders are always going to be important players in any company; but that doesn’t mean they have to be involved in all the day-to-day operations of the business. In fact, trying to do everything yourself is a sure way to burn out. At the end of the day, it’s your job to set up an organization that can run smoothly on its own, so that you can spend more time following new ideas and leading the way forward.
Let’s give the last word to the author, Ari Meisel, who we interviewed in 2016. Here he is, talking about delegation and time:
Meisel: The thing is, [delegation] is like a muscle that you have to use. Anything you do more than twice, there should be a process for, and if there's a process they can almost definitely be automated. So that's the thing, you're not aware of what you could possibly be taking advantage of by not having that be part of what you do or even by going through the process of automating it so you don't have to do it. Be protective of your time, it's the only thing that we have that we can't get more of.

[Pritesh Pawar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is good for startup owners or aspiring entrepreneurs. It shows how you need to be replaceable when you are in the top position. What we have always been told otherwise that being replaceable is actually a bad thing.
However, when you move to the top position of your firm or company, it is not really easy to replace you. But you should be replaceable because you can't do each and everything in your company.
-Building an effective team
-Automation of your tasks
-Managing time using various tools
-Putting your team to pipeline method
These are some ways to be replaceable. After all, as a founder or CEO, you need to manage other better things as well.
P2

[Lance Willett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet. If you've seen Ari speak, it'll be similar to his general framework of OAO: optimize, automate, outsource. Look at constraints.

Main point of the book: when growing a business, the blocking item is often the founder.

Productivity is all psychological.

- Be tool agnostic
- Use shortcuts and expose them
- Reference assets in an absolute sense to reduce errors
- And yet, people in the relative sense
- Automate with tools like IFTTT, Zapier
- Avoid delegation and outsourcing as long as possible
- Six levels of delegation from “Just do what I say” to “Just get it done” — choose your level of empowerment
- Make yourself replaceable

[Carla Doria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ari Meisel is definitely an expert in his field. So many good teachings to rescue from this little book. I even found it discussing with an entrepreneur. I definitely recommend it for anybody looking to not only pursue a new project but in general for anybody in their own jobs. Knowing when to delegate and focus only on what you do the best is important, but the best takeaway is knowing the process in detail, spending time to know the process, so that you are able to delegate and transmit your vision to the people who will be working with you. For any leaders, or wannabe leaders, I think there is much to learn from this book.

[Robin Jose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice and concise as far as books go, just under 100 pages. Having worked with quite a few founders I can say book provides good practical advice – such as the need for a scalable foundation, finding the right people, having clear goals and finally delegation.

Well, none of these are dramatically new – and this is probably my criticism of the book as well. Nothing new here, it’s just mostly common sense. But it’s a good reminder, and I’ve mentioned before a crisp read.

[Bree · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the Art of Less Doing and was so happy to be introduced to original and useful strategies to help streamline and off load tasks in both a personal and professional sense. I followed up with this book for the business angle. Ari makes some really wise decisions and shares his mechanisms for building businesses that capitalise on delegation, automated processes and out sourcing. It’s changed the way I think about my ‘to do’ and the options available to me to manage it.

[Felipe CZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

As leaders, we have to make ourselves "replaceable", by building right company structures, identifying tasks, delegating better (from simple tasks to full authority), and looking for skills, problem-solving and personality when recruiting, as well as taming emails with filters (do, delete, defer), so that the organization runs more smooth.

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important questions that get answered:
What tasks are you not good at? - delegate them.
Who should do what? - define roles and recruit the right people with the fitting skills.
When should I arrange a meeting? - at a time fitting best.
How can I sort my tasks? - set filters such as “do”, “delete” to concentrate on work you need to be doing.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good practical advice

There is a lot of actionable advice here but is more tailored to up and coming entrepreneurs. However, it is a quick read and suitable to get you started on automation and delegation.

[Synthia Salomon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes the best way to move forward is to slow down and go back to the basics. What made you successful? Remember: Founders are important but they don’t need to be a part of the “day to day”.
Be protective of your time. The author advocates for delegation and automation.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good advices here for every founder of startups

[Bojan Stojnić · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not breath taking, bit contains some practical take aways.

[Douglas Widick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for those of us who do a ton and seem to never get what they really need to get done at the same time