You Can’t Do It Alone
In your own business, have you already started to enlist support, even help from others around you, hiring help? Have you begun to formally delegate some tasks to others?
You might excel at promoting your business. Maybe you love running the financial end of the enterprise. You could be someone who started a business because you have unique creative or technical know-how to create a product.
Any of the above is possible, but it’s unlikely that you are going to excel at all of these tasks – or at all of the tasks involved in running any business.
Forget that “loner” image.
No matter how “I can do it myself” your philosophy is, you’re going to need some help sometime.
The willingness to get that help – having (physical or virtual) employees, partners or consultants for those areas in which you are not the expert – is one indicator of likely future success. As development consultant Ernesto Sirolli writes in Ripples from the Zambezi:
“No successful entrepreneur has ever succeeded alone. . . .
The person who is most capable of enlisting the support of
others is the most likely to succeed.”
Every responsible business owner signs up to do everything in the business – ‘whatever it takes’ – to make the business prosper. This same ‘can do’ attitude can actually be a handicap if you insist on burning yourself out doing everything.
Here’s a quick way for you to identify what you should be doing for your business and what you should find other people to do for you:
- Make a list of all the things you do in the business – it could be short, but more likely it’s a long list. Write down every item, task, and responsibility.
- Go through this full list and circle the three things you absolutely love to do – likely they are the reasons you are in business. [I love to help business owners increase productivity and improve processes].
- Go through your full list again and highlight the three things you personally are the best at in the whole world. [e.g.: My niece is the best finder of Falmouth sea glass in the whole world. I know the#1 Worldwide Communications Excellence Specialist. ].
- Make a new list of only those six things. Identify the subset of three that only you and no one else can do in or for your business. Those will become the only things you do.
What do you do with the rest of your list – the extra burden you have always shouldered personally? Delegate every single task that is not one of your top three.
You can’t be as successful alone as you can be with a team to support you. Now you have a reason to lead a team. That team becomes part of the vision and mission of your business. Their expertise enhances and complements your own, increasing your likely future success.
Especially for New Englanders like me, the Puritan ethic is strong. ‘Why should I have someone else do this, when I know how and it only takes 5 minutes/30 minutes?”
I was speaking with an estate planning attorney recently who had gone through this process a year ago. He knew it would net him more income; he knew the market would prove him right. But his team could not see the vision until it was implemented and the results started to come in just recently. It was 11 months of leadership conviction and belief that is now paying great dividends.
Administrative Support
You can always seek out local resources. If you extend your search on the internet, you’ll find a wide variety of service providers around the globe who do exactly what you want done. For example:
DJ Watson and Associates, Certified Professional Virtual Assistants – http://www.virtualmvp.com/ and http://www.vitalassistant.com/
Andrea Lee and Tina Forsythe at http://www.onlinebusinessmanager.com/ provide virtual assistants to coaches and consultants
Waterfield Business Center, LLC, http://www.waterfieldbusinesscenter.com/ The MA leading provider of Virtual Officing; services include Remote Receptionist (Follow You Anywhere in the World), Office-by-the-Hour, Virtual Assistant, Event Registration
www.elance.com and www.ifreelance.com are great sources for short contract people to do anything. And they bid on your project. Then you decide who to work with.
