Why do most entrepreneurs fear delegation so much? Partly because their businesses are their babies and they think that only they know what's best for them. It feels awkward, even dangerous to leave their baby in the hands of strangers. All of those what-ifs pop into their brain and before they've even thought the issue through, they've ruled out delegation altogether. Part of it is also the mistaken belief that they need to work harder to succeed. They feel that the hours, effort, and anxiety they put into their business, the more they will get out of 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 through a number of businesses myself, I've come to realize that we often have difficulty telling the difference between the business concept itself and the dirty little things that are involved in actual production or manufacturing process.
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 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!
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?
It's the money! It's the profit that we want to receive from our business! That's the main reason we quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs!
That's why, before we start any venture at all, it is important to know if the business even has a chance of becoming successful or if we'll just be stuck baking bread for the rest of our lives.
Ultimately, your task as an entrepreneur is to invest available recourses at a rate of return that exceeds your cost.
Sounds simple but it's not really. Think you know what exactly it cost to make each individual widget or loaf of bread? Are you sure?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
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?
One more time: everything has a price! Your involvement costs money!
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's not about loosing control, it's about gaining control! You are the brain, you are the brand! Let somebody else execute your ideas! After all you want the benefits, not just a feeling of involvement! Keeping the big picture in mind is what it takes to build a large organization.
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.
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 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!
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! - 15478
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 through a number of businesses myself, I've come to realize that we often have difficulty telling the difference between the business concept itself and the dirty little things that are involved in actual production or manufacturing process.
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 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!
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?
It's the money! It's the profit that we want to receive from our business! That's the main reason we quit our jobs and become entrepreneurs!
That's why, before we start any venture at all, it is important to know if the business even has a chance of becoming successful or if we'll just be stuck baking bread for the rest of our lives.
Ultimately, your task as an entrepreneur is to invest available recourses at a rate of return that exceeds your cost.
Sounds simple but it's not really. Think you know what exactly it cost to make each individual widget or loaf of bread? Are you sure?
Everything has a price! The faster you realize it the better! There is nothing free!
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?
One more time: everything has a price! Your involvement costs money!
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's not about loosing control, it's about gaining control! You are the brain, you are the brand! Let somebody else execute your ideas! After all you want the benefits, not just a feeling of involvement! Keeping the big picture in mind is what it takes to build a large organization.
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.
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 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!
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! - 15478
About the Author:
Author: Pavel Becker is a known contributor of articles on the subjects of Internet Marketing and Working From Home. To learn how to make money on-line go to his blog PavelBecker.com
