In 2025-26, 375,331 Australian businesses closed their doors. That is an exit rate of nearly fourteen per cent in a single year, and most of those owners were good at what they did.

Every business owner has three pairs of working shoes. Boots, stilettos and runners. Ask any of them whether they wear all three and almost all will say yes.

But shoes are not decoration. They are chosen for the terrain. The test is not whether the pair is in your wardrobe. The test is whether you have them on when the ground gets rough.

Most owners are in their boots six days a week. The stilettos come out for a conference twice a year and go straight back in the box. The runners are somewhere at the back, worn occasionally, usually because something went wrong.

So the question is not whether you own all three pairs. It is whether you are wearing the right ones.

The Boots

The work. Making the product, delivering the service, the craft you trained in. Boots are what you get things done in, and there is good reason they are the most worn pair you own.

Here is the part most business advice gets wrong. There is nothing wrong with being in your boots. Plenty of owners love the craft, and it is usually why they went into business at all. Stay in them if you want to.

The problem is not doing the work. The problem is hiding in it.

Because boots are comfortable. The work produces an immediate result and it feels productive, so when a week gets hard, that is where every owner retreats. You finish exhausted, and nothing has grown.

There is also a commercial point. Delivery has become faster and cheaper across most industries in the last three years, and the gap between competent and exceptional has narrowed. More to the point, boots work is work that somebody else can do. Strategy and leadership are not. Nobody else can decide where your business goes, and nobody else can set its standards.

So the question is not whether you still do the work. It is whether you are doing the parts only you can do.

The Stilettos

This pair decides where the business goes. Positioning, pricing, offers, partnerships, visibility. Who you serve, and who you are not for.

Stilettos are the room-entering shoe. Height, precision, presence. Wearing them looks like:

• Reviewing your offers twice a year, and retiring the ones that no longer earn their place
• Building relationships before you need them, with people whose clients are your clients
• Being visible on purpose rather than when you happen to have time
• Taking risks with a return you have actually calculated

Most owners keep this pair for occasions, because the work is uncomfortable and the payoff is not immediate. You can spend a month on positioning with nothing to show for it that week. That is precisely why it gets postponed indefinitely.

The Runners

The pair you should be in most days and almost nobody is. Runners are built for distance and repetition. They are performance equipment, and this is the work that never stops.

This pair decides whether the business survives its own growth. Systems, numbers, forward planning, and the people who do the work. Where the stilettos see opportunity, the runners see what will break when you take it.

Two halves to this pair, and most owners are doing both at about sixty per cent.

The operational half:

• Reading your numbers monthly to make decisions, rather than annually to lodge a return
• Documented processes for anything you do more than twice
• Quarterly goals, measured against honestly
• Automation of repetitive work, so your hours go to what only you can do

The people half:

• Being clear about what good looks like, so nobody has to guess
• Setting the standard and then holding it, including on the days it is inconvenient
• Having the hard conversation early, while it is still a small conversation
• Giving your team enough context to make decisions without you
• Consistency, because lack of consistency creates confusion, and confusion creates calamity

Half done is the usual state here, and half done is its own problem. The processes were written eighteen months ago and nobody has updated them since, so people work around them. The numbers get looked at when something goes wrong. The software was set up properly and then half abandoned. A standard was set once, held for a fortnight, and quietly let go.

The people half goes the same way. The performance conversation gets had, then never followed up. The role gets described in the interview and never again. Expectations exist in your head and were never said out loud.

None of this is neglect. It is a busy owner getting things eighty per cent done and moving to the next fire, which is a completely reasonable way to behave and a terrible way to run a business. A half-built system is worse than none, because people rely on it right up until the moment it fails them. A standard held inconsistently is worse than no standard, because the team learns it does not really apply.

This is why growth so often makes a business worse. More revenue through a business held together with sticky tape does not produce more profit. It produces more mess, faster. Add people to that without consistent leadership and it produces mess with a payroll attached.

What has changed

The runners have become far easier to wear. AI and affordable software now put systems within reach of a solo operator that used to need staff, and at FEMPIRE we run the whole business through Asana. Leading people has not become any easier, and no tool will do it for you.

The stilettos have gone the other way. Barriers to entry have collapsed in most service industries, so when anyone can start, positioning is what separates you.

Less of your week should go to the boots than five years ago. More should go to the stilettos than you are giving it now.

Which pair is only decoration?

Look at last week and add up the hours honestly across the three. Most owners find eighty per cent or more in the boots, a scattering in the runners when something urgent broke, and close to nothing in the stilettos.

Then the real test of each pair. What has this protected me from in the last twelve months? Shoes doing their job stop something. A bad client, mispriced work, a hire that would not have worked, a cost that would have crept. If you cannot name what a pair has prevented, you have been carrying it rather than wearing it.

And one more: which pair do you reach for when you are stressed? That is the one you hide in. The one you avoid is where the business is stuck.

Taking them off

Early on you wear all three yourself, and there is good reason to keep it that way for a while. You need to understand a function before you hand it over, or you cannot tell whether the person you hired is doing it well.

As profit allows, the pairs come off in a reliable order. Production or delivery support first, then admin, then marketing execution, then management. The stilettos are the last pair to go, and for most owners they never do.

Two things to get right. Document the process before you delegate it, because an undefined job produces an undefined result. And get proper advice on how you engage people, because the rules on contractors, employees and offshore team members have tightened considerably in the last two years.

The destination is a business with structure and process that runs when you are not in it.

And then there are the ballet flats

The fourth pair is not a business function. It is the pair you wear when you are not working.

Weekends. School pick-up. Dinner with people you like. A holiday where nobody phones you. The reason you built the business in the first place, before it started billing you for the privilege of owning it.

Most owners cannot remember the last time they wore them properly. And the honest link back to the other three is this: the flats only come out when the runners have been doing their job. A business with real systems, documented processes and a team that knows the standard is a business that can operate for a fortnight without you.

That is not a reward for getting the other three right. It is the entire point of getting them right.

Start here

Track your hours for five days across the three working pairs. Do not change anything, just record it.

Then ask one question of the boots column: how much of this could somebody else do, if it were properly documented and properly handed over? Not all of it, and not necessarily today. Just how much.

Whatever is left after that answer is the work only you can do. Move two hours a week toward it, in the diary, treated like a client appointment.

Two hours a week is one hundred hours a year on the part of the business nobody is currently running. It is also the fastest route to the fourth pair.

Want help with the pair you have been leaving in the box?

A Fempire Certified Coach will work with you on the strategy and leadership that turn a job you own into a business that runs. Work With A Fempire Certified Coach.

Adapted from the technician, entrepreneur and manager framework in Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth.

Trudy Heins

As the owner of Fempire and Trudy Heins Business Coaching, Trudy’s mission is to help women create strong, strategic, and financially resilient businesses, the kind that support the life you really want.

With over 35 years in business and finance including 30 years as a Certified Financial Planner. Trudy has built and sold multiple businesses, led high-performing national sales teams, and coached hundreds of women to achieve lasting success.

She knows what it takes to go from idea to income and from coach to company owner.