The biggest hurdle for most entrepreneurs is learning how to successfully delegate. Often, they don't even stop to think. The business is theirs and they feel that they need to micro-manage every aspect of it-"I'm my own boss! I don't need anybody to help! I'll only ever be successful if I pour all of myself into it!"
The problem they face is a tough one. When the business becomes their baby, who can they trust to run it but themselves?
I've been around long enough to know that owners often have difficulty separating the business's concept from all of the little intricacies that go into the actual production.
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!
Nothing could be further from the truth!
This poisonous mindset is actually what costs a lot of small business owners the very thing they are trying to protect-their business!
To find out why, we have to take a step back and ask, "Why did we start the business in the first place?" Are we in it to provide a service to our customers or generate income for ourselves?
Isn't that financial independence and prosperity is the reason why we took the leap of faith and went into business for ourselves?
That's why, before we start any venture at all, it is important to know if the business even has a chance of becoming successful or if we'll just be stuck baking bread for the rest of our lives.
Ultimately, your work as an entrepreneur is to invest available resources at a rate of return that exceeds the price that you pay for them.
Sounds simple but it's not really. Think you know what exactly it cost to make each individual widget or loaf of bread? Are you sure?
Everything costs money! Everything.
Think you've figured out what I'm talking about? How about your time? Isn't that worth something?
The inability or unwillingness to stick a concrete price on the time they spend running their business can cut the legs out from under any entrepreneur before they even get started. They seem to forget that if somebody was paying them to do all of the things that they do, they'd be making a pretty good chunk of change. For some reason, everyone thinks that if they do something themselves, the labor is somehow free. Nobody thinks ahead that far but the issue would never even come up if owners budgeted for every aspect of their business before-hand.
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 started your business hoping to make an average income. Do you even know what that is? John Assaroff says it should be around high six- low seven- figures per year--on average $1,000,000.00 per year. That figures out to $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!
The thing that made us choose to the life of a business owner was the ability to be free from all of the restrictions of being somebody else's employee. We wanted to earn more, travel farther, work fewer hours, spend more time with our families, and be financially stable.
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 feels a little funny at first, at least until you realize that you're not actually losing control of anything. In fact, you're just beginning to actually control things rather than letting them control you!
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
When I was flipping houses (rebuilding fixer-uppers and trying to sell them at a profit) I thought I had to do everything myself. Those houses became a part of me and even the thought of letting somebody else do something with them just irritated me. I could just imagine all of the ways they could screw things up before they even got started.
It would take me forever to finish one property and after having spent so much time and effort on it you get really frustrated when a prospective buyer refuses to see how special that house is. All they see is one more three bedroom house among the other three bedroom houses on the market!
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 would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves 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!
One year, after I had started college, I told my family I could handle the harvest by myself. "Really?" they asked, clearly upset by the potential of being excluded from this ritual. "Sure," I said.
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 taught 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! - 15433
The problem they face is a tough one. When the business becomes their baby, who can they trust to run it but themselves?
I've been around long enough to know that owners often have difficulty separating the business's concept from all of the little intricacies that go into the actual production.
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!
Nothing could be further from the truth!
This poisonous mindset is actually what costs a lot of small business owners the very thing they are trying to protect-their business!
To find out why, we have to take a step back and ask, "Why did we start the business in the first place?" Are we in it to provide a service to our customers or generate income for ourselves?
Isn't that financial independence and prosperity is the reason why we took the leap of faith and went into business for ourselves?
That's why, before we start any venture at all, it is important to know if the business even has a chance of becoming successful or if we'll just be stuck baking bread for the rest of our lives.
Ultimately, your work as an entrepreneur is to invest available resources at a rate of return that exceeds the price that you pay for them.
Sounds simple but it's not really. Think you know what exactly it cost to make each individual widget or loaf of bread? Are you sure?
Everything costs money! Everything.
Think you've figured out what I'm talking about? How about your time? Isn't that worth something?
The inability or unwillingness to stick a concrete price on the time they spend running their business can cut the legs out from under any entrepreneur before they even get started. They seem to forget that if somebody was paying them to do all of the things that they do, they'd be making a pretty good chunk of change. For some reason, everyone thinks that if they do something themselves, the labor is somehow free. Nobody thinks ahead that far but the issue would never even come up if owners budgeted for every aspect of their business before-hand.
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 started your business hoping to make an average income. Do you even know what that is? John Assaroff says it should be around high six- low seven- figures per year--on average $1,000,000.00 per year. That figures out to $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!
The thing that made us choose to the life of a business owner was the ability to be free from all of the restrictions of being somebody else's employee. We wanted to earn more, travel farther, work fewer hours, spend more time with our families, and be financially stable.
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 feels a little funny at first, at least until you realize that you're not actually losing control of anything. In fact, you're just beginning to actually control things rather than letting them control you!
Do what you are the best at - business development and strategizing - and let somebody else handle all the technical details.
When I was flipping houses (rebuilding fixer-uppers and trying to sell them at a profit) I thought I had to do everything myself. Those houses became a part of me and even the thought of letting somebody else do something with them just irritated me. I could just imagine all of the ways they could screw things up before they even got started.
It would take me forever to finish one property and after having spent so much time and effort on it you get really frustrated when a prospective buyer refuses to see how special that house is. All they see is one more three bedroom house among the other three bedroom houses on the market!
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 would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves 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!
One year, after I had started college, I told my family I could handle the harvest by myself. "Really?" they asked, clearly upset by the potential of being excluded from this ritual. "Sure," I said.
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 taught 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! - 15433
About the Author:
About the author: Pavel Becker is a known contributor of articles on the subjects of Internet Marketing and Home-Based Business. To find out how to make money on-line go to his website PavelBecker.com
