“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business – you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”
~Michael Gerber
How to Get Clear on Your Role in Your Business
According to Huffington Post, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that more than 60% of small businesses pack up within the first three years. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the primary causes is that people go into business for themselves because they are good at doing something.
Now, being good at something will not make your business fail, but rather, being good at something does not equip a new business owner for the pressures of starting, maintaining and growing a business.
In his book, Gerber explains the phenomenon:
The Technician, The Entrepreneur and The Manager
- The technician is a person who is good at something.
- The entrepreneur is the dreamer, the one that reaches up to achieve a goal.
- The manager is the part that gets things done.
If you’re like many small business owners, maybe you can relate. You may have gone into business for yourself because you wanted more freedom. But pretty soon, you found that you were working harder than you’ve ever worked in your life.
Here’s the problem: the technician in you desired to start a business because you wanted to do what you enjoy or create an empire and have more freedom.
So it’s the technician that’s being given free rein. Except, the technician is not the one that’s going to grow the business, so you’re going to keep on working like a lunatic, doing your job. Note, I said “job” because you are just doing a job instead of growing your empire.
Time to change that.
What needs to happen is that you allow the entrepreneur and the manager out to play.
Want to Work Smarter? Systemise your Business.
Why? Systemising your business is all about developing systems to handle mundane tasks, those tasks that are necessary to support your business. The first step is to identify what those systems and processes are and who should be responsible for them.
Following my 5 Lists To Getting Clear on Your Role, you will discover your true value and what you can delegate to grow your business.
Because scaling a business requires more than one person. You’ll only find freedom once you can begin to delegate.
Let’s take a look at the kinds of things you, as the owner, should be doing in your business:
You should work on the highest-impact tasks and strategic planning to move the business forward.
You should be working on the highest impact tasks and strategic planning, to move the business forward.
Develop an operations manual/knowledge hub so that when you begin delegating tasks, you can make sure everyone’s on the same page as you. An example would be a brand style guide used by the freelancer graphic designer to ensure he or she uses the right colours, fonts and so on.
But you wouldn’t stop there – you would do this for all the areas in your business that require standards, consistency and higher productivity.
How to Get Clear on Your Role in Your Business
Your Time is Money
To give context, think of your time as money.
If you provide a service, for instance, how much do you want to make? Then work backwards. Say you needed to make $150 an hour to achieve your goal.
If you’re worth $150 an hour, what good is it to work on tasks that you could pay someone else to do at $30 an hour? And while they work away doing your admin and other repetitive tasks, you could work on systemising your business, finding new opportunities and even a little rejuvenating time.
When you delegate tasks and responsibilities to people who can do the tasks better or at a lower price than you could, it will free up your time to lead and scale your business.
The types of tasks you should be delegating or automating are:
- Website maintenance
- Social Media Marketing
- Appointment scheduling
- Bookkeeping and accounting
- Research
Keep your focus on your goal, not on the daily activities that will keep you bound to your business.
Keep your focus on your goal, not on the daily activities that will keep you bound to your business.
Find out what you should be doing to grow your business, make more profit and have a business that is easier to run. Check out the latest resource.
