What I’m Doing Wrong and You are Too

Do you know what your weaknesses are? I know exactly what my primary weakness is and I think it’s something you will relate to. I’ve been working to overcome it for years, with all the progress I’ve made I still have much work to do. I’m undoubtedly a control freak and what’s worse not only do I like to be in control of everything I still get wrapped up in a scarcity mindset. You know exactly what I mean, that little voice that says, “It won’t take long, and it would be cheaper and easier to just do it myself.”

Can you relate? I think just about any entrepreneur can, I mean at heart we all start as technicians, we’re really good at something and that something generally ties into a skill that we can easily sell because we’re so good at it leading to some people writing us cheques. Somewhere along the line you get this idea to turn that skill or service into a business, you work hard reach your physical limit and after a great amount of fear and trepidation you leap and begin to hire people.

Once you take this gigantic and critical step new fears and problems arise, and you are their creator. At first you resist giving up control, you resist letting people make decisions and ultimately mistakes, after all it’s your name on the line. As you work to overcome these fears and slowly let them take some responsibilities you then take on new projects, now you are doing things you may not necessarily be really good at but you persist. You justify that you need to do it, that that was the reason you hired these other people that are now doing what you were really good at. You further justify that in order to be profitable it’s just better if you do it yourself.

The truth is these are all big fat lies; believe it, because even I’m still doing it wrong too often. Writing this is like therapy, it’s often easier to tell others what to do than do it yourself, yet it’s also that first step in changing your own paradigm or mindset.

When you make the transition from job to self-employed you do so with a passion for what you do, you love what you do and it makes you leap out of bed each morning with vigour and enthusiasm. Once you reach the point of hiring other people you then face responsibilities for things you’re not good at and often don’t enjoy, but the right answer is that if you don’t enjoy it with the absolute passion that you started your business with you shouldn’t be doing them but rather these are the tasks you should be hiring and delegating to other people. You may think you can’t afford to but the truth is you can’t afford not to. Now if you’re like me I’ve read and heard that in many success books and audios and I often was left thinking, “yah but these guys forget what it was like to be really small with no budgets for these kinds of things.” Truth is that’s just your scarcity mindset.

If I wanted to give you this car, could you raise $25,000 for it? Of course you could, yet we often don't trust ourselves that things will "work out."

At our recent workshop in Calgary I remember Bedros talking about something, an example, like someone had a Ferrari sitting in front of them that was worth like $250,000 or more and that person was going to offer it to you on one condition, you had to raise $25,000 in the next 24 hours. The question is, could you do it? Sure you could, anyone could, I mean you could literally approach an almost near stranger to borrow the money on the premise of selling the car at a gigantic discount, paying them a healthy return and pocketing enough to go buy a brand new less expensive sports car of your choosing, it would be that simple. My point is, is that any time you tell yourself you can’t afford to do something in your business you are probably lying to yourself because if you needed to do something you would find a way, there are no if’s ands or buts, it would just happen. That’s how the universe works if you believe in something or commit to something with every fiber of your being it generally just happens.

So now let’s put this back in perspective with your business and the problem with being a control freak and a scarcity mindset. Do you ever feel burnt out? Sure you do, everyone does at times. I was recently listening to an audio program by Dan Sullivan and he said something about when you do things with passion it should fill you with energy, even more than you already have. You shouldn’t burn out very often from doing the things you really like to do. What an amazing concept for the success of your business, don’t bog yourself down with the things you don’t like to do, they will only kill your creativity, your productivity and they obviously aren’t your strengths or you would like to do them.

Find others who have the strengths to do the things you don’t like to do and aren’t good at, let them shine by doing what they are good at. This is now easier than ever from www.kijiji.ca classifieds to www.elance.com and www.odesk.com you can find someone to just about anything you need in hours. By freeing you up to do what you are good at it will be easy to produce the revenue you need to pay for this new service in fact if you doubt this just look at your current to-do list, look for 1-2 things that have been on there for way too long. What have you been putting off? Everyone dreads or avoids something that seems to never get done. What would you have had to pay someone else to do this for you? How much new revenue could this have created your business if this had been done when you originally thought of it? Truly these numbers can be frightening and staggering when you begin to add up the lost opportunity of all the tasks you’ve been procrastinating on.

What does this mean?

1)      Dan Sullivan teaches “define your 10 best habits.” What are the things you do every day that you really enjoy doing, give you more energy, and you are really good at? These are the things you should be doing, try to delegate all other things to people that have those skills in their 10 Best Habits. (Make the 10 Best Habits and exercise for any prospect you are considering hiring, if they enjoy what they do, do you think they will work hard and be highly productive?)

2)      Don’t think about what you “can’t” afford, instead ask yourself how much will it cost to have someone else do it, then work backwards to determine how much new business you will need to create and if you can create that new business in the same or less time, I bet you can.

3)      Let others make mistakes, it’s a hard lesson to learn but if you wish to grow a successful business you have to remember that you learned what you have by making mistakes. Let the people in your organization make mistakes also, by having confidence in them to learn from failure and right any wrongs along the way you will likely have a more loyal team that grows much faster.

4)      Leave your comments in an effort to initiate your own “therapy” if you too are trying to overcome this weakness. 🙂