Being an entrepreneur is difficult, very difficult. Many times young entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of doing too much.
People will tell you that you have to want it as much as you want to breath and there’s definitely a certain truth to that. You’ve certainly got to be willing to put in a tremendous amount of work.
The desire to succeed and spend every waking moment working towards your dreams isn’t the issue. The issue is that you’re doing things that aren’t helping your bottom line. You’re filling out the paperwork, writing up quotes and purchasing the supplies while also working on a client’s project, starting a marketing campaign and working on new ideas.
These type of business owners are known as CDE’s, which stands for ‘Chief Does Everything’. It means you want to do everything and constantly micro manage every single part of your business.
Being a CDE can be a tremendous growth stunter for your business. It takes away from your passion and can truly ruin your morale and dedication to the things that really need to be done.
But how do I fix this?
Well, plain and simply, you either outsource or hire employees to take care of the monotonous tasks for you. If you’re looking to grow as a business you can’t do it by yourself. You’ve got to realize that other people are eventually going to have to join you on the journey if you want to expand your business and consistently succeed at a high level. It’s impossible for you to do it by yourself.
How do I know what I’m hiring people to do?
This is the easy part. Write out a checklist of everything that you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to keep your business running smoothly. You could even extend this to quarterly and yearly if you’d like. Write down every single thing that you spend even the slightest amount of time on.
Now, find someone or multiple people that can do those tasks for you. I understand that finding people to work for you may be difficult because either you’re a start up business that doesn’t currently have the income to hire somebody or else you don’t have the time to train people.
Well, once again, you’re eventually going to need people to help you expand. Why not make that now? Why not get rid of the monotonous tasks?
Once you make the decision to become a CEO you’ll begin to find a renewed passion for why you became an entrepreneur in the first place.
It’ll also give you a little extra free time, which is important to have every once in awhile.
As Dolly Parton once said, ‘Don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.’
