DIY: for many small business owners, it’s the secret key that unlocks their ability to accomplish their dreams. In the early years of your business, you handled many tasks on your own, including tasks that are far outside your normal skillset. You found yourself learning to do things that you never thought you could do, accomplishing things you never thought you could accomplish, and taking your business to new levels.
But when owning a business, is doing it yourself actually the best way to go?
Fast forward a couple of years.
- You’ve been successfully running and owning a business.
- You have a couple of team members.
- You’re the CEO of a six-figure small business: a role that you’ve had your eye on for years, and which you’re able to perform with success.
Except for a few little details.
- You’re constantly overwhelmed.
- You’re oversaturated with strategies and no one to execute them with excellence.
- You’re ready to get the work done, but sometimes, you feel as though there’s not enough time in the day while having to take care of every little detail yourself.
Sound familiar?
How Much is that Dedication to Doing It Yourself Costing Your Business
As a CEO, you’re dedicated and driven!
You are owning a business and you are committed to taking care of whatever your business needs. In many cases, you’ll find yourself stepping in and doing things even when you’ve tried to place them in someone else’s hands. Unfortunately, doing it yourself isn’t free. Not only is your time worth more than you think, but you may also find that trying to do it all yourself is causing a number of problems for you, your business, and your team.
You’re losing time.
If you’re constantly focusing on taking care of every little task yourself, it won’t take long before you start running out of time. And when owning a business, your time is important. There are jobs that, as the CEO, only you can do. Instead of focusing on every small task that comes your way, keep in mind the revenue-generating tasks that are most critical and that only you can complete–and then make sure you’re focusing on moving forward those critical tasks, rather than letting them fall by the wayside while you focus on everything else.
You’re losing money.
Take a look at your salary. What does an hour of your time really cost? Now: if you spend an hour of your time on admin tasks that could be completed by someone else, you are losing more money on it than if you would have paid someone else to execute the same task? Not only that, while you’re performing those tasks–many of which are not within your area of expertise–you could be focusing on tasks that could help bring in more revenue, raise the value of your current customers, or help improve customer satisfaction to ultimately increase your business.
You’re out of energy.
Owning a business is hard work. The more tasks you pile on your own plate and the more stressed you become, the less energy you’ll have–and, therefore, the less energy you’ll have to put into the more important tasks on your list each day. Not only that, your team may be reflecting the same lack of energy, especially if you’re piling on too many tasks to take care of.
You’re struggling with the learning curve.
I know there were a lot of new tasks you had to learn to take care of in the early days of your business. Even if you managed to absorb the basics of those tasks early on, however, you may find that there’s a steep learning curve for taking care of them–and that learning curve continues to increase as technology grows. Your staff may face the same struggle as they fight to stay ahead of the curve.
You’re doing a lot of rework.
All too often, when owning a business, CEOs sweep in and redo the work already done by another member of the team–often to the detriment of the team and the business as a whole. You don’t need to redo existing work. You trust the members of your team. Let them do their jobs so that you can focus on yours.
When Owning a Business There are Tasks You, as the CEO, Shouldn’t Take On
There are many things that you, as the CEO of your business, need to do on a regular basis. Other tasks, however, should be left alone. Make sure you’re not:
Building your own sales funnel.
Not only does this key piece of your marketing puzzle work more smoothly when you leave it to the experts, but you also have more things to do with your time than examine every aspect of how customers move through the sales funnel.
Posting to your own social media accounts.
As the CEO, you don’t have the time to monitor and respond to all those posts–nor should you have to add that responsibility to your list.
Responding to support emails.
Any member of the team can respond to support emails–and this task is one that you can outsource with ease. If you’re answering your own support emails, you may be understaffed or failing to consider the full needs of your business, rather than just the immediate ones.
Scheduling your Zoom meetings.
Let someone else take care of those important scheduling tasks.
Effective CEOs don’t have to sweat the small stuff: the day-to-day tasks of running the business. Instead, they know when to delegate, who to trust with those important tasks, and how to handle both outsourcing and hiring staff to ensure that the business runs as smoothly as possible. Don’t fall into the mindset that taking care of it yourself is free. The cost, all too often, mounts higher than you think it does–and it shows through poor performance, burnout, and the inability to grow your business as much as you had hoped.
We know that owning a business is tough, and that doing it yourself can bring hassles.
Are you tired of managing a low-performance team, receiving strategy after strategy and not having someone you trust to execute or implement without your micromanagement?
Let’s talk.
Contact us (team@sonayawilliams.com) today to learn more about how we can partner to shift some of the responsibilities off of your plate, create systems & automation to free up your team to handle the tasks with confidence.