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.
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 a complete misconception!
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?
The money, right? It's okay, be a little selfish. If you're a business owner, you've worked hard enough to deserve it!
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 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 costs money! Everything.
Know where this road's headed? You got it, the value of your time!
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!
The key is having an accurate budget. Allowing time and funding for an accountant? How about a cleaning service? You've at least got a receptionist, right? How about a loading-unloading crew? What, you thought it wouldn't cost you anything if you did it yourself?
Everything has a price! That means your time too!
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 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 took me such a long time to finish each and every house and when the potential buyers cam round, all they did was nitpick the place and complain. They never noticed all of the hard work that went into bringing the house back from the grave. It was just another house on their list to visit that day.
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.
Finally, when I had gone off to college, harvest time came around. I told my family not to worry about the harvest, that I could handle it myself. "Are you sure" they asked. I could tell they were really feeling awkward about it because harvesting your own crop was "the in thing." "Sure," I said. "I can handle 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 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!