Why do most entrepreneurs fear delegation so much? Partly because their businesses are their babies and they think that only they know what's best for them. It feels awkward, even dangerous to leave their baby in the hands of strangers. All of those what-ifs pop into their brain and before they've even thought the issue through, they've ruled out delegation altogether. Part of it is also the mistaken belief that they need to work harder to succeed. They feel that the hours, effort, and anxiety they put into their business, the more they will get out of it.
The problem they face is a tough one. When the business becomes their baby, who can they trust to run it but themselves?
Having been through a number of businesses myself, I've come to realize that we often have difficulty telling the difference between the business concept itself and the dirty little things that are involved in actual production or manufacturing process.
By default we think that as business owners we are supposed to be involved in every aspect of our business; that we have to know everything about everything that is involved in the process of the creation of the final product and that's the way it should be if you want to run your own business.
That's completely backward!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
Step back and look at things from a different perspective. What is the essence of a business? Why did we want to be business owners? Was it the sheer joy of providing fresh bread or superior toilet cleaning services to customers? Or was it the ability to make money doing something we actually liked?
The money, right? It's okay, be a little selfish. If you're a business owner, you've worked hard enough to deserve it!
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 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.
Think you've figured out what I'm talking about? How about your time? Isn't that worth something?
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."
Everything has a price! That means your time too!
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 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.
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 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!"
There was a place in town where bums hung around a lot. I went there, paid a few of them a fare wage for a day's work, and the potatoes were all out of the ground before dark.
I never told my family what I did. I knew they would be beside themselves if they ever found out.
Plus, 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!
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 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!
The problem they face is a tough one. When the business becomes their baby, who can they trust to run it but themselves?
Having been through a number of businesses myself, I've come to realize that we often have difficulty telling the difference between the business concept itself and the dirty little things that are involved in actual production or manufacturing process.
By default we think that as business owners we are supposed to be involved in every aspect of our business; that we have to know everything about everything that is involved in the process of the creation of the final product and that's the way it should be if you want to run your own business.
That's completely backward!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
Step back and look at things from a different perspective. What is the essence of a business? Why did we want to be business owners? Was it the sheer joy of providing fresh bread or superior toilet cleaning services to customers? Or was it the ability to make money doing something we actually liked?
The money, right? It's okay, be a little selfish. If you're a business owner, you've worked hard enough to deserve it!
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 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.
Think you've figured out what I'm talking about? How about your time? Isn't that worth something?
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."
Everything has a price! That means your time too!
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 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.
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 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!"
There was a place in town where bums hung around a lot. I went there, paid a few of them a fare wage for a day's work, and the potatoes were all out of the ground before dark.
I never told my family what I did. I knew they would be beside themselves if they ever found out.
Plus, 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!
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 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 Working From Home. To find out how to earn money on-line go to his website PavelBecker.com
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