Entrepreneurs are, for the most part, workaholics. They love to spend hours poring over information, examining their business processes, and doing all they can to improve their results and generate profits. When you work for yourself, work is its own reward, and entrepreneurs often sacrifice their free time in order to focus absolutely on their business.
In the early days of an enterprise, these workaholic tendencies are understandable – getting a business off the ground is hard work, and if you have experienced this yourself, you’ll know a 9am-5pm work schedule is unlikely to produce results. However, when your business is operating well and growing steadily, stepping back from day-to-day management can be hugely beneficial – for both you and your company.
Embracing delegation
Many entrepreneurs find that they struggle to delegate tasks to the employees they are able to hire. While this is understandable – many entrepreneurs see their business as their “baby”, and allowing another person to have control over it can be genuinely stressful – delegation is vital to the success of any business. There is a point at which your energy alone cannot power your company; you have to be willing to step backwards and let it operate, a separate entity from you.
If you hire staff, then it’s important to empower those staff members to make decisions that influence the running of the company – and delegation is the simplest and most effective way to achieve this.
Outsourcing for specialist assistance
In the early days of a company, you will likely have had to perform a variety of different roles within the company: you were head of IT, head of marketing, head of SEO, head of accounts… this is how businesses begin, with a single person who multitasks.
However, when a business reaches a certain stage of growth, this multitasking not only becomes more difficult in terms of the demands it places on your time, but also in its lack of specialist knowledge. The larger a business becomes, the more it needs genuine expert input from seasoned professionals. You can hire specialist employees to take over these tasks, but many businesses now find that obtaining outsourced SEO or managed IT services is far more efficient and cost-effective than hiring on-site staff. Outsourcing allows you to obtain the specialist knowledge you require, but without the need to engage with a long hiring process, or jump through the bureaucratic hoops hiring multiple members of staff would involve.
The need for entrepreneurs to take a vacation
Entrepreneurs don’t tend to take vacations; instead, they prefer to work constantly, either for concern over losing business or a lack of trust in staff. However, taking a vacation every once in awhile is genuinely positive for entrepreneurs, and can provide the space for fresh inspiration and ideas that will further the business when they return. If you have not taken a vacation since starting your company, it may well be worth planning one as soon as possible – and this should be all the more feasible if you have delegated and outsourced many of the day-to-day tasks required to keep your business running.
In conclusion
Stepping back from a business you have nurtured from the ground up is never easy, but it is necessary. By learning to delegate, exploring your outsourcing options, and finding the confidence to take a vacation every once in awhile, you can be sure that you and your company are able to flourish for years to come.
