I spent the first half of my career in the corporate world. When I was in the marketing department, the marketing people didn’t know anything about finance. When I was in the finance department, the staff always grumbled about the waste of money on advertising. They had no concept of the importance of marketing the business.
People were specialists in their field. They were great in their area, but not so much in the other functional areas.
Yet, as I meet with small business owners, most feel that they need to be the expert in every area. They feel they need to be the best sales person, know more than their accountant, and understand exactly what the consumer wants and needs.
It is a burden the small business owner carries often (and it doesn’t come from big business).
If you are one of these small business owners who beat yourself up because you are not an expert about everything in your business, then I hope you are reading this.
5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Do It All
Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t require yourself to wear all of the hats in your business as your business grows:
1. You won’t be using your time in your highest area of gifting. If you are a sales person at heart, you are not doing your company any favors by reconciling bank statements. Go sell something and get a good bookkeeper or accountant.
2. You will be spread too thin and become a bottleneck. We can’t do it all anyway. If we try to actively work in every area of our business, we will stop growing because then we can’t grow our business beyond our own personal reach.
3. You will not bring any additional expertise or talent into your business. All businesses need expertise in all areas of the company. If you only hire support people, and you are the one to train them, then they will only know what you know. Sometimes we need to hire in expertise that we don’t have.
4. You will lose satisfaction with running your own business. You started your business with passion. When you are daily required to do work you are not trained to do, gifted at doing, nor good at, it sucks the life and love out of you.
5. You will not be fun to work with or for. Business owners, trying to do it all, are usually stressed, lack confidence, can’t make decisions, and at some point, let the strain seep out on others. It isn’t inspiring working with or for someone who is overwhelmed and overloaded.
These are five very legitimate and valid reasons for you to give up the pieces you hate, and hire people that are experts in that functional area. You are not just doing it for you; you are doing it for everyone around you! They want you to lead the company, create vision, make decisions, and develop your team. They do not need you to be good at everything.
That friend that you have who works for the big corporate giant, ask him how many functional areas he is directly responsible for. I will wager it is only the one he has education, talent, and experience in.
What are your key areas of gifting? Have you delegated the rest? Do you allow yourself to lean on the other experts in your business?
Reader Interactions