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?
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?
We need to consider in advance if the business is going to make money or are we just hoping that if we do what we do-whether cleaning floors, building houses, or baking bread-the money will flow in.
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.
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 costs money! Everything.
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your 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!
It all comes back to budgeting. Did you budget for an accountant, for a cleaning lady, for a receptionist, for a loading-unloading professional, or you thought you would do it yourself and therefore it will be "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!
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 you start your own business and still don't get any of those benefits, what's the point?
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.
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 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 hadn't been to college yet, but I was already feeling that it wasn't the way to go, that this one-sided self-sufficiency was wrong, but I couldn't figure out why everybody was still doing it.
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!
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!
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! - 15336
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?
We need to consider in advance if the business is going to make money or are we just hoping that if we do what we do-whether cleaning floors, building houses, or baking bread-the money will flow in.
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.
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 costs money! Everything.
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your 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!
It all comes back to budgeting. Did you budget for an accountant, for a cleaning lady, for a receptionist, for a loading-unloading professional, or you thought you would do it yourself and therefore it will be "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!
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 you start your own business and still don't get any of those benefits, what's the point?
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.
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 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 hadn't been to college yet, but I was already feeling that it wasn't the way to go, that this one-sided self-sufficiency was wrong, but I couldn't figure out why everybody was still doing it.
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!
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!
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! - 15336
About the Author:
Author: Pavel Becker is a frequent contributor of articles about On-Line Marketing and Small Business Development. To find out how o earn money on-line go to his blog PavelBecker.com
