You can’t do everything yourself!
When you’re running a small business it is tempting to think you can do everything yourself and only ask for help as a last resort. That, is a big mistake!
No matter how much you try, no matter how indispensable you may think you are, you can’t do everything yourself! So, the smart thing to do is take advantage of other peoples expertise.
So, three questions.
First of all; At what point do you get help?
Second. What roles do you relinquish?
And third. Where do you go to find help?
All good questions. Let’s start with the first one.
1. “At what point do you enlist help?”
The answer is that there is no standard answer. But, it’s important to recognise that the very thing that got you to this point, in other words your entrepreneurial spirt, your work ethic, your willingness to learn new skills and multi task, now stands in the way of you growing further.
The very nature of small business is just that ‘small’, and they are typically started with limited resources [both financial and people]. And so by virtue of that, the small business owner has to do everything themselves. I’m sure that sounds familiar!
Doing everything yourself is often a necessity when you first start the business, and has the added upside of giving the business owner a real grounding in all the multiple aspects of running a small business.
But typically, before long the business owner is operating in a state of overwhelm, wearing too many hats and spinning too many plates. And inevitably sooner or later ‘some will start to fall’, so don’t wait until it’s too late, be proactive rather than reactive.
That brings us onto the second question which was…
2.“What roles do you relinquish?”
I suggest that the best way to answer that is to start by identifying where your strengths and weaknesses are, play to your strengths and enlist help in the areas that you need it most.
Some entrepreneurs are great at having a good idea and then seeing the commercial potential, but others lack the business acumen to implement their ideas properly.
So it’s critical to have access to people who can put in place the business processes around those ideas which will typically be in the areas of Management, Finance, Marketing and Human Resources.
As you start to expand the business you will have to delegate, and if the people you are delegating to don’t share your passion or vision or the values of the business, it can become un-necessarily difficult.
Which brings us to the last of the three questions which is…
3.“Where do you go to find help?”
There are many different ways of surrounding yourself with the help you need to run your business so it is important to choose a way that is right for you.
In some cases, it might be time to get another full time employee, other times it might be wise to start off by employing someone in a part time role, or you might outsource it to a company that specialises in a particular area, for example for something like payroll or bookkeeping.
And the last option is that you might engage the services of a business coach or other external consultants that you can use as you need them.
One of the things that you need to bear in mind is that as the business starts to grow it’s important to keep the culture you established.
The culture is like the DNA of the business and it lives only through the people you hire, so anyone you work with has to be a ‘cultural fit’ as well as bring an additional expertise.
Once again, there isn’t a right or wrong solution that is a fit for everyone. It really depends on budgets, the skillsets that you are looking for and whether it’s an ongoing position or something you need just to get the business to the next level.
So if this has caused you to think about your current situation the…
Next steps are to…
Sit down with your team and brainstorm these 5 questions:
Thank you for watching…
I hope you got something out of today. If this has been helpful and you would like to find out more about what we do or are wondering if one to one coaching might be right for you then visit growmysalonbusiness.com/coaching and make sure that you read GROW 2 Management as there are lots of valuable ideas in there which will be of help.
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Have a great week!