If you spend any amount of time on the internet these days, it’s extremely trendy to be an entrepreneur. It’s even trendier to talk about scaling your business. There are about 27 million small businesses in the United States. The vast majority of them are self-proprietorships or solo-preneurs, as we like to call them. While a solo-preneur can be extremely successful on their own, it takes a team and leveraging other people’s time to really build something substantial. What is ironic to me is how much talk there is about scaling a business, when over 90 percent of business owners will never do it.
Not a day goes by where I fail to see a coach, consultant, or guru telling people they will help you scale your business. Funny how most of them don’t have a team. In the last 12 months, I’ve hired two mentors who are helping me grow and scale my business. I also attended a mastermind event where a small group of real estate investors talked about how to systematically grow and scale. When the dust settles and you take stock of all the information out there and what we are working on, a few things become clear if you’re looking to grow and scale; and it’s a whole lot easier than you think!
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for GMP about working on your weaknesses. In that article, I talked about identifying the things you’re not good at (or don’t like doing) and then finding someone that is, offloading those tasks to them. It’s not about spending your time working on getting better at the things you’re not good at. We are all good at certain things. We are all wired differently. What I’m good at and enjoy doing might not be the same for you. If we are very different, we might actually make a good team. You do what you’re good at. I’ll do the same.
At the end of the day we complement each other and our strengths.
The first step is to start journaling. I use Evernote for pretty much everything. I am actually writing this article on that platform right now! It’s on all my devices and syncs automatically. At the end of each day, I take a quick second and reflect. What went right? What went wrong? What could have been better? What am I thankful for? And most importantly, where was I uncomfortable? What did I have to do today that I hated doing? What did I procrastinate on because I don’t like to do it? I write all these things down and then sleep on it. In the morning, I review this list of items again. It’s a list of things that someone else needs to do! If you’re a solo-preneur, your first hire will be a rockstar that can happily take over a number of these things right away and free you up to do the things you are good at, that you enjoy, that most likely is what is driving revenue into your business.
If you already have a team, take a second and identify who on your team could handle each item on your uncomfortable list.
Once identified, send them an email, a text, or setup a meeting in Asana or Trello to have a conversation TODAY about them taking on this new task or responsibility. You will be amazed at how much momentum there is in giving up something that is making you uncomfortable.
Do this every evening and every morning. It takes about 10-15 minutes, at the most! It you make time for this type of activity, do it consistently, and actually offload where you are uncomfortable, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you will grow!
At the end of the day, scaling and growth is easy. It’s simply a function of consistently identifying where you are uncomfortable, delegating to your team (or new hires) and systematically replacing yourself until you are laser focused on your highest and best use. As you grow, you help your team do the same things for themselves. You help them identify the things they are uncomfortable with, hire new employees to offload these tasks to, at the same time elevating these existing employees to higher levels within your growing organization.
One thing I learned while going through business school and spending almost 20 years in industry before starting my own business, is that most organizations have it completely backwards. It’s no wonder most companies are stagnant, fail, or never get beyond the solo-preneur.
Stop what you’re doing right now, think about what is stressing you out about your business, identify where you are uncomfortable and see if anyone else in your life could help take that off your plate. If not, you have all the things listed for your job description for your first (or next) employee!
Here’s to your growth and success!