Delegation has always been a problem for a lot of entrepreneurs. In a many cases there isn't even a question about it: it's my business and therefore I must be as involved as I possibly can! It feels normal - I'm my own boss and because of it I don't have anybody to help me, I'm only as successful as how hard I work.
Let's take a look at the first problem. You're right to feel that your business is your baby. You brought it into being and you alone are responsible for it. To a certain degree, you do know what is best for your baby.
Having been involved with several businesses, I've come to believe that we willingly choose to ignore the forest for the trees. The concept becomes overshadowed by the daily details and the nitty-gritty details involved in actual production of the product.
We feel that we have to know every aspect of our business, inside and out, and that nobody else could ever understand it as well as we do. We feel that everything has to have our personal stamp of approval or the business will fail!
That's a complete misconception!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
In order to see why it happens let's go back a little bit and ask ourselves: what is a business? Is it an opportunity to provide your customers with fresh bread and cleaning services or an opportunity to make money for an entrepreneur?
It's the money! It's the profit that we want to receive from our business! That's the main reason we quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs!
So when we consider a new opportunity we have to calculate ahead of time: are we going to make money on it or we just know how to bake bread and clean floors and we assume that if we own the entire business it will automatically make money for us.
Ultimately, your task as an entrepreneur is to invest available recourses at a rate of return that exceeds your cost.
That's the hard part! Just look at all of the articles that go into your business's overhead! Do you even know what they all are? Really?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
You know exactly where I'm going with this! That's right! Your own time!
Inability to put a price on their own time runs a lot of small business owners out of business! They think that if they do something themselves, they are getting it for free! This kind of entrepreneurs end up doing everything without any help hoping to "cut costs" and they don't realize that the problem would never happen if they budgeted for every component and every position in their business.
Haven't you met business-owners who never has time available or money available because "You know, we run our own business, things are tough?"
Things are not supposed to be tough unless you make them this way!
Budgeting correctly can save you so much hassle and frustration. Set aside funds for accountants, a receptionist, loading dock workers, even a janitor. Do it or you'll find yourself "doing it" and trying to figure out just how doing it yourself makes it "free."
One more time: everything has a price! Your involvement costs money!
You figured you could start and an "average" small business and make "average" money. Any idea what that means? Try high six- low seven- figures per year-or $1,000,000.00 per year. And that's according to John Assaroff. That's $420.00 per hour!
So, every time you do anything for your business other than making a decision, you should ask yourself: "Can I buy it for less then $420.00 per hour?" and if you can - you should!
Another problem is - what if you can't? Then you have to be honest with yourself - your business idea does not have enough upside to support itself and you should immediately abandon it! And by "immediately" I mean IMMEDIATELY!
After all we start our own business to eliminate things that we don't like about being employed by somebody else: lack of financial freedom, lack of geographical freedom, lack of ability to spend time with our family, lack of ability to travel, lack of ability to contribute.
If we aren't getting those things, why put up with the hassle?
Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a business and a job this way: if you can leave it for a year and find it still running and even grown when you come back - it's a business, if it dies the next day you leave - it's a job!
So when we are talking about home based business we should be open to the idea of delegating most of the activities to outsourcers: article and press-release writing and submission, link building, social media communications, message boards and forums postings, content development and distribution, etc.
It's not about loosing control, it's about gaining control! You are the brain, you are the brand! Let somebody else execute your ideas! After all you want the benefits, not just a feeling of involvement! Keeping the big picture in mind is what it takes to build a large organization.
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
I remember, in the beginning of my real estate investing I was flipping houses: you buy a falling apart house, fix it up and sell hopefully making some money at the end. I was trying to do everything myself, because you can't let somebody else mess it up! It's my baby! Nobody else can hang drywall better than I can and nobody can install a new toilet the unique way I do it!
It took forever to finish a single house just for the buyers to come in and make rude comments about the choice of paint or carpet. They never saw how much effort I had really put into that property. It was just another three bedroom ranch in a field of three bedroom ranches to them!
And at some point I partnered up with a group of people who had been flipping houses for quite a while as well and, seeing how attached I get to the house we were renovating, they shared with me their approach: they would actually make an effort not to be at the property during the renovation process, they actually hired a project manager to supervise the process and to avoid the need for them to be at the property. They were subbing out everything, focusing only on acquisition and selling aspects of the business. This approach allowed them to avoid falling in love with each property and to become the biggest company on the market within literally a few months!
I have another great example for you.
Back home, in Russia, we have this belief that has been around for decades: you have to grow your own potatoes, because if you do it yourself - it's free. I'm not joking!
I remember how every year we all had to participate in this weird activity: no matter how wealthy you are, no matter who you are, everybody was getting really involved in planting and growing potatoes. We would plant it manually and harvest it in the fall by manually digging it out of the ground! It was a lot of work!
I never understood why my parents refused to buy potatoes in the market. They were cheap enough but every time I brought it up, they would say that by growing the potatoes ourselves, they were free.
I was still young but something about that struck me as wrong. I just couldn't figure why everybody was working so hard for a few potatoes when they could buy them for pennies a pound!
I remember eventually, when I was already in college, when the time came again to harvest potatoes, I said to my family: "Hey, guys, I can handle it myself, you don't have to go with me. I'm a strong guy and I will take care of it without your help!" They said: "Are you sure? It feels really weird, because for years it's been an activity that the entire family must participate in! Everybody else does it this way!" I said: "No, you are fine. I got it!"
Then I went to the place in town where bums were sitting all the time waiting for work and for barely any money I hired them to take care of this potatoes situation and it was done by the end of the day.
I didn't tell my family what happened because they would consider it almost sacrilegious!
They were so proud of me!
And, eventually, in college, I learned that I was right, when I read in the book the words that I remember by heart: "A world of individual self-sufficiency would be a world with extremely low living standards. Trade allows people to specialize in activities they can do well and to buy from others goods and services they can not easily produce. Specialization and trade go hand in hand because there is no motivation to achieve gains from specialization without being able to trade goods and services produced for goods and services desired. That's why economists use the term "gains from trade" to embrace the results of both."
So I was right!
It sounds like poetry to me!
One more time: you don't have to do everything in your business and you don't have to be good at everything in your business!
As John Assaroff told me: "Hire people who play at what you have to work."
The faster you learn how to delegate, the faster you will be able to develop your business to the point where you can finally move to Costa Rica, learn how to surf and get to spend day after day on the beach with your family relaxing and drinking those fruity drinks with little umbrellas!
You are a business owner! That's what you do: you own your business!
Let somebody else handle the technical aspects and that's when you will experience the freedom you started your business for in the first place! - 15254
Let's take a look at the first problem. You're right to feel that your business is your baby. You brought it into being and you alone are responsible for it. To a certain degree, you do know what is best for your baby.
Having been involved with several businesses, I've come to believe that we willingly choose to ignore the forest for the trees. The concept becomes overshadowed by the daily details and the nitty-gritty details involved in actual production of the product.
We feel that we have to know every aspect of our business, inside and out, and that nobody else could ever understand it as well as we do. We feel that everything has to have our personal stamp of approval or the business will fail!
That's a complete misconception!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
In order to see why it happens let's go back a little bit and ask ourselves: what is a business? Is it an opportunity to provide your customers with fresh bread and cleaning services or an opportunity to make money for an entrepreneur?
It's the money! It's the profit that we want to receive from our business! That's the main reason we quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs!
So when we consider a new opportunity we have to calculate ahead of time: are we going to make money on it or we just know how to bake bread and clean floors and we assume that if we own the entire business it will automatically make money for us.
Ultimately, your task as an entrepreneur is to invest available recourses at a rate of return that exceeds your cost.
That's the hard part! Just look at all of the articles that go into your business's overhead! Do you even know what they all are? Really?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
You know exactly where I'm going with this! That's right! Your own time!
Inability to put a price on their own time runs a lot of small business owners out of business! They think that if they do something themselves, they are getting it for free! This kind of entrepreneurs end up doing everything without any help hoping to "cut costs" and they don't realize that the problem would never happen if they budgeted for every component and every position in their business.
Haven't you met business-owners who never has time available or money available because "You know, we run our own business, things are tough?"
Things are not supposed to be tough unless you make them this way!
Budgeting correctly can save you so much hassle and frustration. Set aside funds for accountants, a receptionist, loading dock workers, even a janitor. Do it or you'll find yourself "doing it" and trying to figure out just how doing it yourself makes it "free."
One more time: everything has a price! Your involvement costs money!
You figured you could start and an "average" small business and make "average" money. Any idea what that means? Try high six- low seven- figures per year-or $1,000,000.00 per year. And that's according to John Assaroff. That's $420.00 per hour!
So, every time you do anything for your business other than making a decision, you should ask yourself: "Can I buy it for less then $420.00 per hour?" and if you can - you should!
Another problem is - what if you can't? Then you have to be honest with yourself - your business idea does not have enough upside to support itself and you should immediately abandon it! And by "immediately" I mean IMMEDIATELY!
After all we start our own business to eliminate things that we don't like about being employed by somebody else: lack of financial freedom, lack of geographical freedom, lack of ability to spend time with our family, lack of ability to travel, lack of ability to contribute.
If we aren't getting those things, why put up with the hassle?
Robert Kiyosaki explains the difference between a business and a job this way: if you can leave it for a year and find it still running and even grown when you come back - it's a business, if it dies the next day you leave - it's a job!
So when we are talking about home based business we should be open to the idea of delegating most of the activities to outsourcers: article and press-release writing and submission, link building, social media communications, message boards and forums postings, content development and distribution, etc.
It's not about loosing control, it's about gaining control! You are the brain, you are the brand! Let somebody else execute your ideas! After all you want the benefits, not just a feeling of involvement! Keeping the big picture in mind is what it takes to build a large organization.
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
I remember, in the beginning of my real estate investing I was flipping houses: you buy a falling apart house, fix it up and sell hopefully making some money at the end. I was trying to do everything myself, because you can't let somebody else mess it up! It's my baby! Nobody else can hang drywall better than I can and nobody can install a new toilet the unique way I do it!
It took forever to finish a single house just for the buyers to come in and make rude comments about the choice of paint or carpet. They never saw how much effort I had really put into that property. It was just another three bedroom ranch in a field of three bedroom ranches to them!
And at some point I partnered up with a group of people who had been flipping houses for quite a while as well and, seeing how attached I get to the house we were renovating, they shared with me their approach: they would actually make an effort not to be at the property during the renovation process, they actually hired a project manager to supervise the process and to avoid the need for them to be at the property. They were subbing out everything, focusing only on acquisition and selling aspects of the business. This approach allowed them to avoid falling in love with each property and to become the biggest company on the market within literally a few months!
I have another great example for you.
Back home, in Russia, we have this belief that has been around for decades: you have to grow your own potatoes, because if you do it yourself - it's free. I'm not joking!
I remember how every year we all had to participate in this weird activity: no matter how wealthy you are, no matter who you are, everybody was getting really involved in planting and growing potatoes. We would plant it manually and harvest it in the fall by manually digging it out of the ground! It was a lot of work!
I never understood why my parents refused to buy potatoes in the market. They were cheap enough but every time I brought it up, they would say that by growing the potatoes ourselves, they were free.
I was still young but something about that struck me as wrong. I just couldn't figure why everybody was working so hard for a few potatoes when they could buy them for pennies a pound!
I remember eventually, when I was already in college, when the time came again to harvest potatoes, I said to my family: "Hey, guys, I can handle it myself, you don't have to go with me. I'm a strong guy and I will take care of it without your help!" They said: "Are you sure? It feels really weird, because for years it's been an activity that the entire family must participate in! Everybody else does it this way!" I said: "No, you are fine. I got it!"
Then I went to the place in town where bums were sitting all the time waiting for work and for barely any money I hired them to take care of this potatoes situation and it was done by the end of the day.
I didn't tell my family what happened because they would consider it almost sacrilegious!
They were so proud of me!
And, eventually, in college, I learned that I was right, when I read in the book the words that I remember by heart: "A world of individual self-sufficiency would be a world with extremely low living standards. Trade allows people to specialize in activities they can do well and to buy from others goods and services they can not easily produce. Specialization and trade go hand in hand because there is no motivation to achieve gains from specialization without being able to trade goods and services produced for goods and services desired. That's why economists use the term "gains from trade" to embrace the results of both."
So I was right!
It sounds like poetry to me!
One more time: you don't have to do everything in your business and you don't have to be good at everything in your business!
As John Assaroff told me: "Hire people who play at what you have to work."
The faster you learn how to delegate, the faster you will be able to develop your business to the point where you can finally move to Costa Rica, learn how to surf and get to spend day after day on the beach with your family relaxing and drinking those fruity drinks with little umbrellas!
You are a business owner! That's what you do: you own your business!
Let somebody else handle the technical aspects and that's when you will experience the freedom you started your business for in the first place! - 15254
About the Author:
About the author: Pavel Becker is a known contributor of articles on the subjects of Web-Promotion and Small Business Development. To find out how to earn money on-line go to his website PavelBecker.com
