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 somehow feel obligated to be a part of every little thing that goes on in our business and "have" to know everything that is going on at any one time. We're taught that's the way it supposed to be if we want our business to take off.
That's completely backward!
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?
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.
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 has a price and those prices just keep rising. If you don't learn that, you'll never survive! There are no free rides.
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your time!
What really hurts many small business owners is their Inability to put a definite price on the time they spend working for themselves. They fall prey to the misconception that if they do the work themselves, it doesn't cost them anything! This kind of thinking sucks you in by making you believe you are "cutting costs." What you don't realize is that they wouldn't have to cut costs if they had had an accurate budget to begin with.
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!
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 don't get to experience all this, then why bother?
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.
You may think that delegation entails losing some aspect of control, but in reality it's about gaining control.
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 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!
Financial background didn't matter at all. Everybody planted their own potatoes! It takes a lot of effort to plant potatoes in the spring and harvest them in the fall when you're doing all the work by hand!
I kept asking my parents why don't we just buy potatoes at the store (they were obviously very inexpensive) and they would keep telling me that if we grow them ourselves they are 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!"
I remember I went down to this place where jobless men used to gather and offered them some hard cash for their labor. They had all of the potatoes harvested before the day was over.
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!
Once again: 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 get 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!
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 somehow feel obligated to be a part of every little thing that goes on in our business and "have" to know everything that is going on at any one time. We're taught that's the way it supposed to be if we want our business to take off.
That's completely backward!
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?
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.
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 has a price and those prices just keep rising. If you don't learn that, you'll never survive! There are no free rides.
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your time!
What really hurts many small business owners is their Inability to put a definite price on the time they spend working for themselves. They fall prey to the misconception that if they do the work themselves, it doesn't cost them anything! This kind of thinking sucks you in by making you believe you are "cutting costs." What you don't realize is that they wouldn't have to cut costs if they had had an accurate budget to begin with.
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!
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 don't get to experience all this, then why bother?
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.
You may think that delegation entails losing some aspect of control, but in reality it's about gaining control.
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 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!
Financial background didn't matter at all. Everybody planted their own potatoes! It takes a lot of effort to plant potatoes in the spring and harvest them in the fall when you're doing all the work by hand!
I kept asking my parents why don't we just buy potatoes at the store (they were obviously very inexpensive) and they would keep telling me that if we grow them ourselves they are 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!"
I remember I went down to this place where jobless men used to gather and offered them some hard cash for their labor. They had all of the potatoes harvested before the day was over.
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!
Once again: 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 get 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!
About the Author:
Author: Pavel Becker is a frequent contributor of articles on the subjects of Web-Promotion and Home-Based Business. To find out how to make money on-line go to his website PavelBecker.com
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