Many of us entrepreneurs start our businesses as technicians. This means we have a skill, specialty, or trade that we apply to serve our clients. We open our businesses to provide the product or service that stems from that expertise. And some business owners like being the technician. They want to be the one to coach the client one-on-one or do the manicures or review their clients’ books. They enjoy it and want to keep doing so. But as some people say, “If you are not growing, you are dying.” If you want to grow your business to reach new levels of profitability or reach new markets or serve more clients, you may need to loosen your grip on being the technician and start growing into more management- level positions.
How do you know when it’s time to grow? When demand starts creating pressure and you no longer have the time to manage the business because you are too busy “doing” the business. When you spend eight hours working on client projects and then spend the next four hours doing the marketing and business development and finance. This is when you need to step back and ask yourself, “What’s the highest income-producing activity only I can do?” So for me, it’s teaching, coaching, and selling clients. If you are an accountant, it could be preparing/delivering a financial analysis and presenting an accounting workshop. For speakers, it could be delivering the keynote.
Now look at the other tasks on your job description: Do the other activities have as high a price tag and can they be delegated to someone else? The answer is very likely yes. If you can hire an administrative or virtual assistant to send emails to new prospects you recently met at a chamber event, and pay them a fraction of what you are earning, wouldn’t it make sense to do so? If you make $250 per hour providing financial analysis reports, and it only costs you $20 per hour to pay an administrator to process business cards that would take you an hour to do, you are essentially losing $230 per hour doing a task that should be delegated. And your admin may be able to do that task in three minutes instead of the hour that it takes you, so you are now actually losing $240 by doing his/her work. You call yourself saving money, but you are actually wasting money.
So, you can see that it may be time to give yourself a promotion in the business and allow others the opportunity to shine at their level of expertise. Let others come in and do what they enjoy and excel at doing while you go out and make more money so you can pay everyone. Take a look at your job description—are you doing someone else’s work at a much higher price tag?
Moving Up the Ranks
If we don’t launch (or buy into) a business with a team already in place, we are often the one providing that service in the early stages. We service the client, we network for new clients, we enter their business cards in our system, we write the ad copy, we manage the social media, and we empty the trash cans in our office. We often do it all.
The needs of the business change as our business, client base, and reach expand. We are no longer enough! (This is one time where not being enough is okay.) We have to wean ourselves from doing all of the client work, so we can grow into the management of an enterprise. This can be tough to do because we are used to doing it all and we want to be the ones to work with our clients. Believe me, I know how this feels.
When I made this transition in my first business, I was so used to being the one producing the results that I only felt valued if I was producing or selling something. When my team was using my work, my products, and my approach to do a great job for our clients, I thought it reduced my value. It took me a while to appreciate the skill of motivating someone else to produce the results, and that their results enhanced me and my role as a leader. When you’re a great leader, you recognize that your team’s success is your success! You must put your ego aside with humility and grace.
Leading a business will require different skills and values at differing levels of growth. For years, I have been sharing the following levels of leadership with my clients:
- Individual Contributor
- First-Time Manager
- Manager Managing Others
- President
- CEO
These levels, presented in order of growth and significance, each re- quire different skills and a different balance of time, and place value on different elements. When you understand what the role is and the time each person spends in each role, you have more freedom as a leader.
Susie Carder is a globally recognized profitability coach and inventor of the Predictable Success Method™. Her radical business strategies have helped thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve exponential growth and triple their profits. As a private consultant, Carder coaches small business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs in professional management and efficiency to streamline channels of profit for companies. She is the former president and COO of Motivating the Masses, Inc., an international transformation and training company for small business owners led by Lisa Nichols. She and her business have been featured in The New York Times, the Associated Press, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and NBC News, to name a few. Visit .
Copyright © 2020 by Susie Carder. From POWER YOUR PROFITS: How to Take Your Business from $10,000 to $10,000,000 by Susie Carder. Reprinted by permission of Atria, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
