December 17

Business done easy? Be careful what you ask for.

One thing that I hear when I spend time with new entrepreneurs is a desire to have their business plans, processes and structure done with little work on their part.  There is one big reason for this that I will explain.  Before I get into that, I will say that you are setting yourself up for disaster by letting someone do work for you without any involvement from you the business owner.

I was inspired to write about this from spending a week in Lake Tahoe with an entrepreneur group called CEO Space.  I don’t know how many times I heard the phrase, ‘I don’t know, I just want someone to do it for me.”  If you don’t know how you want your business to function, you are in for a lot of trouble because no one else does either.

The biggest reason you hear the above statement is because starting a business from scratch and doing all the things that go into putting it together is a lot of work.  Despite the work and effort, you must own your business throughout the process.

Why do I say this?  Isn’t it smart to delegate?  Having people involved in your business who bring expertise is a great move but that doesn’t mean you should totally get out of the way and not be involved.  Even if something is not your expertise, you should have a basic understanding of how it functions in your business.  I see this a lot with marketing campaigns.  The owner lets the firm that he/she hired run with whatever is they do and the business owner has no understanding of how the business is brought in or how the campaign functions.  They then realize way too late in the process that the campaign was/is ineffective.

If you don’t like wasting time or money, stay involved with all aspects of your business in terms of you understanding.  Particularly in the beginning.

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  1. For me, much of my desire to delegate could be deduced to my taking on too much at one time. I found it much more effective to hone my focus; to work on a ‘core’ area of value creation. When I have that surplus of value (to exchange) and an accurate understanding of that core, I can either expand into other areas, else expand by replicating that core value. Following this model has also helped me to ensure that the core I’ve chosen is that which is truly ‘me’.

    –Dave C.

  2. Dave,

    I love it. Finding your core values as an individual and business are so important so that you don’t get roped into doing things outside of the value set you have created. Thanks for the post.

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