All our lives we’ve been told to improve the areas where we’re weakest.
If you’re unskilled at something, the common wisdom is to work on skill that really hard so you can eventually be a well-rounded individual. A human Swiss army knife, if you will.
A lot of that same mentality carries over into running a business.
And what happens is you have business owners trying to do all these things that they’re not really good at, because that’s what they think they should be doing.
Instead of knowing what we’re best at, and focusing on those strengths, we try to do it all. That leaves us being inefficient at everything.
You Don’t Have To Be The Best At Everything
One of the best things that I’ve ever done for my own business is realizing that I’m not going to be the best at everything.
When I first started my business I thought I was going to be able to cover everything, and be awesome at everything. Now I realize it’s just not possible.
One of the things I’ve tried to do in the last year or so is figure out the things that ‘m best at and just focus on those all day long. If there’s something I’m not great at, I just go find someone that can do that much better than I can
Thinking longer-term, I’m also assessing what positions I eventually want hire for. Even if some of these plans are still in the future, I’m acknowledging the fact that I can’t cover every possible base by myself.
Internalizing Harmful Beliefs
But I still see a lot of business owners struggling to carry a self-imposed load. They’re trying to live up to expectations that they put it on themselves. They want to believe they can do everything themselves. But what it ends up doing is costing them a bunch of time that would be better spent focusing somewhere else.
When I thought about this, I began to realize is that this expectation of doing everything yourself is a form of Scarcity Mindset.
What I mean by Scarcity Mindset is the internal belief that you have to hoard your resources because you might run out. This self-limiting belief is your subconscious falsely telling you that there’s a limit to how much you can earn, and that it’s better to focus on saving every penny you can, rather than focusing on growing your revenue, so you don’t have to do everything by yourself.
This belief is incredibly common. There’s no shame in realizing you have it. What’s harmful is when you do recognize you have this internalized belief, and you make no attempt to move past it.
When business owners try to do every single thing in their organization by themselves, nine times out of ten it’s because they’re trying to save money.
Instead of finding someone who can do the task ten times more efficiently than themselves, they get stuck on trying to save a few dollars and figure out how to do it themselves. These actions reveal that most people actually believe that money is more valuable than their time, when in fact it’s the other way around.
More Time To Do What You Do Best
Every person on the planet has the same 24 hours to invest. You can always make more money but you can’t make more time.
The businesses that I see growing are the ones that hire specialists, both internally and externally. Ideally, your day-to-day business can still keep chugging along at peak efficiency, even if you decide to take a month or two off.
When you recognize that you don’t have to do everything, you start hiring for those tasks. And what happens is you suddenly have the time to do more of the things that you are absolutely great at.
Now, I understand if you’re just starting out, you’re trying to make money stretch. Let’s be real, you do need a surplus of money to make certain moves. But the goal should always be getting to a place where you don’t have to put everything squarely on your own shoulders.
It’s a circle. Focusing on generating more money means you can hire people to take care of areas you’re not strong in. This gives you more time to work on business development even more.
Know your strengths, and hire for your weaknesses.
Are you doing too much because you’re trying to save a few dollars? Could you hire someone else to do it more efficiently and at a higher level of quality? Would the extra time you’d receive allow you to focus on other areas of your business that need your attention?
