These days the word entrepreneur seems to be tossed around lightly. If you build bird houses in your spare time and sell them to your neighbors, it’s acceptable to call yourself an entrepreneur.
I suppose there is merit to that. You are, after all, manufacturing and selling your own product.
But there is certainly more to it than that, isn’t there?
While many businesses do actually start out as a side project, it takes a very special kind of entrepreneur to grow and scale a successful business.
It’s these sorts of business savvy individuals that push forward, fearlessly into the unknown.
Taking on all sorts of risk and burning the midnight oil to see their vision come to life.
It’s not always a happy ending, though. Many startups fail within their first year. And if they do make it past year one, they will rarely see their five year anniversary.
But why is this? Why are so many businesses doomed to fail?
Well, there are too many answers to that question to cover in one article. However, one of the most common and often ignored reasons is that business owners fail to recognize the fact that they cannot do everything themselves.
As the business owner, you must stick to the things you’re good at and delegate or outsource the rest so you can focus on the big picture. But it’s not enough to just dump your weaknesses onto someone else, they must be the right person, company or service for the job.
The more you delegate and outsource from the very beginning, the more success you will see in the long run. Yet, even with that knowledge, many entrepreneurs fail to do just that. They don’t want to give up control. Or perhaps it’s a trust issue.
I get it, your business is your baby. And in the beginning, you most likely had no choice but to do everything yourself. But as soon as you get up and running, you really should consider any resources available to you that will make life just a bit easier.
Because at the end of the day, you need to be working “on” your business, not “in” your business.
What’s the difference? It’s the difference between unnecessarily long hours and enjoying your free time. It’s the difference between loving what you do and trapping yourself in another job you hate. It’s the difference… between success and failure.
Discover Your Strengths
Every entrepreneur must face the fact that there will be things they are good at, and things they are terrible at. The thing is when you’re first starting out you often don’t have a clue which activities fall into which category. So naturally you dive in and attempt them all.
It will be necessary to “wear all the hats” in the beginning for two reasons. 1) You most likely have a small budget when first starting your business and, therefore, cannot afford to take on employees or outsource certain tasks. And 2) It takes time to discover your true strengths as a business owner.
However, you cannot allow this to continue to be business as usual. First of all, you will burn yourself out, and second, as the owner your time is better spent steering the ship, so to speak.
So how do you define your strengths? It may be easier said than done for many of us would be entrepreneurs. But there is, in fact, a very simple nature to discovering your strongest skills as a business owner. Your strengths are the activities that give you energy and excitement.
For many of us, it is the creative side of the business. A restaurant owner may want to be more involved with the menu or interior design of the building. An online course creator probably wants to focus more time creating content, rather than marketing it.
On the other hand, some of us may prefer to handle more of the administrative work. Perhaps you enjoy the accounting and book keeping more than sales and marketing.
Regardless of what it is for you, the best way to identify your strengths is to follow your passion. What got you fired up to start the business in the first place? Even if you’re not particularly good at it now, in most cases your passion and enjoyment will lead to proficiency.
Identify Your Weaknesses
Now what about those pesky weaknesses? If you consider the advice for discovering your strengths above, you might just take the opposite approach for discovering what your weaknesses are. And in most cases you’d be right. Your weaknesses usually pertain to the things that quickly drain your energy and often lead to procrastination.
However, there can be a bit more to it than that. Unfortunately, passion alone doesn’t always lead to proficiency. In the end, you must do what is best for your business and treat yourself like you would any employee.
Put yourself in the roles that will best serve the direction of the company. While you will usually know best what the large and small goals are for your business, that doesn’t guarantee that you are CEO material. Just be realistic and honest with yourself.
Outsource and Delegate
After you’ve taken the time to discover your strengths and identify your weaknesses, it’s time to consider bringing on a team to help you better manage your business. This is assuming that you have room in the budget.
By now it should be clear what to do here. You should naturally want to focus your own time and effort on the activities you do best. Which means you want to either outsource or delegate those activities that cause you the most pain and frustration.
But that doesn’t mean you want to pass those things on to just anybody. Remember, as the owner you are in charge of doing what is best for your business and that means finding the right people for the job.
The whole purpose of delegation and outsourcing is to free up your time so you can focus on what you do best. If you have to constantly double check the work being done by others, it pretty much defeats the entire purpose.
Working On Your Business Means Looking to the Future
As you are most likely aware of, running your own business requires a lot of time and attention to detail. You’ve got to consider every angle and make confident decisions that move your business in the direction of positive growth.
In order to put your business in a position for growth, you must be free to see the big picture.
While at certain times it may be absolutely necessary to focus on the little things, when you try to do everything yourself you are, in fact, working in your business. And working in your business can be a huge distraction.
However, when you can properly delegate and outsource you are free to look ahead and plan for the future. And that is when you have made the shift from working in your business to working on your business.
To most entrepreneurs there is little or no difference between the two. On the other hand, the smart business owners know that it is up to them to steer their business in the right direction.
And the only way they can truly do that is to free themselves from the frustration of trying to do everything, and place certain tasks in the capable hands of others.
If you are one of these busy entrepreneurs struggling to keep yourself and your business afloat, it is absolutely critical to ask yourself, “Am I working in my business or on my business?”
What are you struggling with most in your business?
As business owners, we all have those moments where we feel completely overwhelmed. And it’s nice to know you are not alone.
If you currently feel lost when it comes to making the correct decisions to move forward in your business, I invite you to leave a comment or connect with me and share your story.
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