The Ownership Advantage w/Tanner O’Brien · 2026-08-05 · 6 min
The Step Back Test is a practical diagnostic tool for business owners struggling with operational dependency. Tanner O'Brien, CEO of Action Coach Benefit Group and founder of Benefit Marketing, outlines a methodical approach to building a business that runs independently. Phase one involves five-day absences from each department - marketing, sales, client fulfillment, and finance - where teams document what breaks and what works, creating a foundation for system fixes. Phase two extends this to 30-day departmental trials to catch issues that emerge under longer-term pressure. Phase three shifts to full business-wide disconnection, starting with unannounced five-day breaks, then scaling to 14, 30, and 90-day absences to flush out remaining decision-dependencies. The framework acknowledges that failure points are valuable data, not setbacks. O'Brien frames this as building a business that becomes a "pillar" rather than an "anchor" - one that sustains you during life's inevitable crises rather than consuming all your time and energy. The approach ultimately empowers teams to think like owners while giving the founder genuine freedom.
Phase one involves taking a planned five-day absence from one department at a time, instructing the team to document everything that breaks and what works. After each five-day test, you return to fix the broken systems before moving to the next department.
Phase two extends the absence to 30 days per department to identify what decisions don't get made, what systems break down under their own weight, and what areas crumble over a longer horizon without your involvement.
Phase three involves unannounced, complete business-wide breaks starting at five days and scaling to 90 days without any decision-making, team management, or communication from the owner - revealing what truly breaks without your presence.
Business planning, quarterly planning, budget building, and other vision-level work that requires owner insight typically only emerge as necessary after 90-day absences.
Broken systems reveal exactly where dependencies and inefficiencies exist, providing the information needed to build robust systems before those failures cause major problems in the business.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
How do you actually know when it’s safe to step away from your business? Not in theory, in practice. I get this question almost every week as a business coach, so I built a three-phase test to answer it for real. I’m Tanner O’Brien, CEO of ActionCOACH Benefic Group and founder of Benefic Marketing. I’ve spent the last six years growing our family business from under $200,000 in revenue to well over a million, using the exact tactics I share in these videos. The Step Back Test runs in three phases. Phase one documents by department, a five day absence from one area of the business at a time, so you and your team can see what actually breaks without you. Phase two extends that same test to thirty days per department. Phase three is a full business wide break, five days with zero access, no Slack, no email, no phone, scaling up to fourteen, thirty, and eventually ninety days as things prove out. By the end of the ninety day trial, what’s left is the handful of decisions that genuinely need you, usually the vision level work like business planning and budgeting. Everything else either holds or shows you exactly what to fix.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: How do I know when it is time to finally step away from doing my business? How do I get out of the day to day? That is a question that I get almost weekly as a business coach and I'm going to share with you my three phase step back test to know if you are ready to step away from the operations of your business. If you're new here or you don't know who I am. My name is Tanner o'. Brien. I'm the CEO of Action Coach Benefit Group. I am the founder of Benefit Marketing and the author of the Ownership Advantage. I am. I have spent the last six years working in our family business to grow from under $200,000 in revenue to well over a million dollars today using these simple tactics that I share with you in these particular videos. So the step back test. The step back test comes in three phases. Phase one is documenting by department. So the best way to do this is I encourage taking a five day absence from whatever department that you want to take the time in. Let the team know, let them know that you're going to be taking some time away from that particular department for five days. Tell them that their job over that time period is to simply document everything that breaks, document the things that work, make notes as they go and anything that's broken we'll come back and fix after those five days. What this process does is anytime that you step back, it allows you and your team to find the things that require wired you in the first place, the things that break, the systems that don't work. It allows us to identify those key areas and then spend time over the next week fixing them, resolving them, moving them forward so you can do another five day test. Once you've done one department, move on to the next one. And do this methodically between marketing, sales, client, fulfillment, finance, each time refining that process to determine what breaks and how do we fix the systems so that they don't break the next time around. Once you've gone through each of the departments, we move into phase two. Phase two now is a 30 day test. So we extend from five days to 30 days and we look for the same things now on a longer time horizon. What decisions don't get done if you're not in the business, what things break, what systems break down under their own weight, what what areas crumble as a result of you being out of that department for 30 days. And I'm talking no decision making, no doing of the work, no management of the team. Let's see what happens. Document each time and Come back and fix the things as you go. Do 30 days in one department and then move on to the next once you've done this in all of the departments. Now we move on to phase three. Phase three is all about taking a full business wide break. This is the fun one, this is the one that most people start to feel a little uneasy about, but when it starts working gives them the most freedom. We've just gone through and we've systemized and we worked on different things in the business. Now it's time to take five days off from the complete business. The big difference this time around in phase three is you don't tell the team that it's coming. You simply say I'm m taking time off, I can't check Slack messages, I'm not going to be able to read my email, I'm not available by phone, I am going to be completely disconnected for five full days and then you take the time off. This will tell you exactly what's happening in your business if the five days go well. Heck, if the five days go by and your business actually gets better as a result, then we move on to a 14 day trial and you can break this up throughout the year as you work through this process. Go five days, then go 14 days, come back, see what's broken, fix anything that may need to be, then do it again for 30 days and then eventually 90. Once you get to 90, most of the major things are going to come out that still need your decision. This may turn out to be things like business planning, quarterly planning, budget building, things that require a little bit more vision might be the last few things that will flush out in the 90 day trial. Going through this process from uh, 5 days to 30 days with the team working with you and then shifting into a business wide step back where you go 5 days, 14 days, 30 days and then 90 days will give you every piece of information that you need in order to build a business that can work without you in it every single day. The key with this is really recognize that things are going to break. The question is what breaks and why does it break? Because that information is gold for you in the business. We can build systems all day long. We can think that they're going to work until they're finally pressure tested. When you walk through this process, you're taking away some of the risk and making it easy to catch things before they become major problems. It also empowers your team to start thinking like owners, thinking like managers and give them ownership over the result. In their particular departments. When you start building a business that can truly work without you, so that you can live a life that works for you, you're creating what I call a pillar. Because when life hits, and life almost always hits, the business is either going to become a pillar or it's going to be an anchor. If it's an anchor, it sucks the life out of you. It takes all of your time and energy and doesn't allow you to show up when life needs you for your family, for your friends, for your acquaintances, for your community. When the business is a pillar and you have moments like that and you've done the step back test and you've gone through this process of building something that can work in your absence, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if all else fails and life throws you a curveball, the business is going to continue to run and act as a pillar that everything else can stand up on. All of this is in my latest book, the Ownership Advantage, which comes out in September 2026. If you want to be one of the first to get a copy, the link to the launch list is below in the description. So there you have it. The step back test. Phase one, document by department, phase two, extended department test and phase three, a business wide step back. Do this step by step and you'll start to build a business that can work without you. And as always, let's go build some amazing businesses together.
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