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!"
And the problem is obvious: our business is our baby! It's our heart and soul and we will fight anybody who will touch it!
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 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!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
In order to see why it happens let's go back a little bit and ask ourselves: what is a business? Is it an opportunity to provide your customers with fresh bread and cleaning services or an opportunity to make money for an entrepreneur?
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 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.
You know exactly where I'm going with this! That's right! Your own 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!
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 cost associated with it, your time included!
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.
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 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 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!
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."
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 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."
I had been right and there was the proof!
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 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! - 15275
And the problem is obvious: our business is our baby! It's our heart and soul and we will fight anybody who will touch it!
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 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!
A lot of the time, it's this attitude and idea that drive most small businesses right into the ground.
In order to see why it happens let's go back a little bit and ask ourselves: what is a business? Is it an opportunity to provide your customers with fresh bread and cleaning services or an opportunity to make money for an entrepreneur?
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 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.
You know exactly where I'm going with this! That's right! Your own 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!
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 cost associated with it, your time included!
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.
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 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 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!
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."
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 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."
I had been right and there was the proof!
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 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! - 15275
About the Author:
About the author: Pavel Becker is a frequent contributor of articles on the subjects of On-Line Marketing and Home-Based Business. To find out how to make money on-line go to his blog PavelBecker.com