The success of your company is not determined by what you do, as much as it is by what you don’t do. You are the entrepreneur. You have the vision. You can do the complex, technical work. You can make the big sales.
Devote your time to doing the complex, big work. And most importantly have the courage to give your $10/hour work to someone else. After all, it is that complex, big work that supports everything else.
Stop doing $10/hour work, it will do wonders for you and your company.
Mike, I totally agree with you on this! In fact, this is a personal struggle for me (and probably most business owners as well even though we’ve heard it a gazillion times!). What would be your advice for entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping to grow their business, knowing that outsourcing $10/hour will do wonders in the longer term, but still having to manage the short term cash flow? This is probably the little voice in the back of every starting entrepreneur’s mind. Bartering comes to mind! 🙂
It’s ironic… but by assigning out the $10/hour, we as business owners are FORCED to create more sales and without that person we stay stuck in doing it ourselves. I believe, hiring someone really forces us to “play” at a higher level. It feels scary because the money won’t be there, but the second you make the hire the real objective becomes clear, we as owners need to sell more. And the only way to get the time to sell more/better is to make the hire.
I am NOT a fan of bringing on unnecessary expenses. This hire is VERY NECESSARY. Without them we will keep doing the busy work and never free ourselves up to do the bigger stuff. In other words without them, I think we can never grow (yet we will keep trying and we will keep stuck).