Let’s say you own a successful tire business generating $2 million of EBITDA. Congrats! But you’re also still deeply involved in running it. You’re the CEO, head recruiter, problem solver and probably the person who gets the call when something goes wrong.

Then you decide to hire an executive for $150,000 per year to take over the day-to-day operation. Congratulations. Your EBITDA just dropped to $1.85 million.

Did you make your business less valuable? Maybe not. In fact, you may have done exactly the opposite.

We talk frequently about the importance of “working yourself out of a job.” I’ve written about it in this column before. But there’s a practical question that comes next: Who replaces you? The answer matters operationally, but it also matters tremendously in M&A.

Consider an owner who pays themselves $300,000 per year. When it comes time to sell, that owner may reasonably expect some or all of their compensation to be added back to EBITDA. And excess owner compensation absolutely can be an addback.

But there’s an important distinction. If you’re also performing a job that somebody will need to do after you leave, we have to account for the cost of replacing you.

If you're earning $300,000 and an executive capable of assuming your responsibilities costs $150,000, the economics aren't a $300,000 addback. We may add back your $300,000 of compensation, but we also need to account for the $150,000 replacement salary, likely via a contra-addback. The net adjustment is $150,000.

Now consider the same business where the owner made that hire three years before going to market. The executive is already running the day-to-day. Employees know who is in charge. Customers and vendors know that person. The buyer can meet the executive, understand the leadership structure and see firsthand that the business can operate without the owner.

Which company would you rather buy?

That’s why I’d argue that hiring the $150,000 executive, despite lowering EBITDA in the short term, can ultimately make the business more valuable. This would be reflected in a calculation of your adjusted EBITDA.

Of course, that leads to the harder question: Where do you find that person? Sometimes, they’re already inside your organization.

One of the best investments an owner can make is identifying potential leaders before they’re needed. Your best store manager may be capable of overseeing multiple locations. A strong service manager may have the ability to lead people well beyond his or her current responsibilities.

Give those people opportunities to prove it. Let someone oversee a second location. Put a promising leader in charge of recruiting, a new initiative or an underperforming store. Have them run operating meetings. Give them progressively larger responsibilities before giving them a bigger title.

You’re not just developing employees. You’re building your leadership bench. But don’t assume your next leader has to come from inside your company — or even your industry.

I’m particularly bullish on the talent pool that exists in collision repair. Collision has spent the last 15-plus years going through rapid consolidation and building sophisticated multi-location organizations. That has created CEOs, regional managers, operations executives, integration leaders and other professionals who have already experienced the challenges tire dealers are increasingly encountering today.

Someone who has successfully overseen 20 collision centers understands a lot about what it takes to oversee 20 tire and automotive service locations — and then some. They understand labor, KPIs, accountability, recruiting, customer experience, acquisition integration and managing leaders across multiple markets, in a sector that I view as one of the harder businesses to operate across all of automotive.

Will they have things to learn about the tire business? Absolutely. But learning tires may be easier than learning leadership.

And I wouldn’t stop at collision. Dealership fixed operations, quick lube, car wash, rental car, hospitality and other multi-unit service businesses can all produce interesting candidates. Instead of only asking whether someone knows tires, ask whether they’ve already solved the organizational problems your business is about to encounter.

As you build that team, it’s also important to understand how those investments show up financially. This is where the distinction between four-wall EBITDA and fully loaded EBITDA matters.

Four-wall EBITDA generally measures the profitability of your individual locations before much of the corporate infrastructure sitting above them. A strategic buyer with its own accounting department, HR team, regional management and other corporate functions may care tremendously about those store-level economics. Some of your overhead may become redundant after an acquisition.

Fully loaded EBITDA tells a different story. It accounts for the infrastructure required to operate the business as a standalone organization.

That distinction becomes especially important if you want your company to be viewed as a platform rather than simply a collection of stores.

If a private equity investor wants to partner with your company and continue growing it, your regional manager, controller or $150,000 executive may not be excess overhead. Those people may be exactly what makes the company capable of scaling.

There’s a natural temptation for entrepreneurs to keep overhead as lean as possible. I understand it. Every new corporate hire reduces EBITDA today.

But maximizing EBITDA today and maximizing enterprise value tomorrow aren't always the same thing.

If a $150,000 executive allows you to remove yourself from daily operations, develop other leaders, add five more locations and give a future buyer confidence that the company can thrive without you, that salary is infrastructure.

Working yourself out of a job doesn’t mean making yourself irrelevant. It means changing your job. As the organization grows, your value should increasingly come from developing leaders, allocating capital, setting strategy and creating the environment in which other people can succeed.

Sometimes the person who allows you to make that transition is already working for you, sometimes you need to go find them and sometimes the best candidate has never sold a tire in their life. Find them anyway.

Because whether you plan to grow, sell or simply get some of your life back, building leadership beyond the owner is one investment that can pay dividends in just about every scenario.