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.
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 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!
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?
The money, right? It's okay, be a little selfish. If you're a business owner, you've worked hard enough to deserve it!
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.
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 has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
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!
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 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.
Back when I was flipping houses (buying cheap real estate and fixing it up while trying to sell it at a profit) I felt I had to do everything on my own. I just knew that if I trusted somebody else to do something it would get messed up and I would have to do twice as much work to fix it. I thought that nobody could hang drywall like I could, that nobody could install toilets the unique way I do it!
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 would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves they were 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!"
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!
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 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!
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 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!
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?
The money, right? It's okay, be a little selfish. If you're a business owner, you've worked hard enough to deserve it!
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.
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 has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
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!
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 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.
Back when I was flipping houses (buying cheap real estate and fixing it up while trying to sell it at a profit) I felt I had to do everything on my own. I just knew that if I trusted somebody else to do something it would get messed up and I would have to do twice as much work to fix it. I thought that nobody could hang drywall like I could, that nobody could install toilets the unique way I do it!
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 would always ask my parents why they didn't just buy the things at the grocery store. They were dirt cheap but my parents would always answer that by growing the potatoes themselves they were 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!"
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!
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 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!
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 earn money on-line go to his blog PavelBecker.com Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.
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