A Brilliant “Trick” Your Competitors Use To Get Ahead Of You
This is a continuation of a story how I turned my ho-hum solo practice into a 7-figure business. If you missed the previous lesson start here.
How I stopped overwhelm and finally grew my business faster…
If you think you are bad at delegation – I used to be the king of “do it yourself” – but no more!
When I was in the restaurant business at one point I had 103 employees. Yet when I transitioned to doing consulting and then coaching and information publishing, allowing other people to help me grown my business was one of the hardest lesson for me to get.
Sometimes I jokingly say, “I’m from Poland – I’m a bit slow.” People laugh. But I’m serious! Because some lessons take me forever to grasp! I also used to say, “I’m from Poland – I’m cheap” – except that my being cheap kept biting me in the butt with expensive lessons.
“The Less I Do The More I Make”
I heard Ron LeGrand, a successful info-marketer, make this statement when I was just getting started in my consulting business. I had no idea what he really. In fact, I actually misunderstood it for being lazy. (Perhaps that’s another one of my conditioning, “I’m from Poland – I’ve been groomed to work hard!”) Anyway… I didn’t quite get it when I first heard Ron say it.
But something funny started happening after I’d been in business for about two or three years…
You see, I have an amazing gift – an ability to learn things at rapid speed. But I’ve also been cursed – with an ability to learn things at rapid speed. It’s especially true when it comes to all things technology. This seemed to be an advantage when starting an online marketing business. Or so I thought…
Until I started noticing some of my friends, who “didn’t know Jack” about technology, were getting ahead of me. They would sooner master the art of black magic than learn how to make a blog post, yet their businesses were obviously growing faster than mine. How could it be? Frankly, it was pissing me off!
The answer was simple.
While I was busy doing time consuming technical stuff, they HAD TO outsource it and, instead, used their time doing things that make money – like marketing ;-)
You might be thinking being a “propeller-hat” gives someone a leg-up in building a business using online marketing, but in fact you’re far better off being a bit techno-phobic and having others deal with this part of business.
Today, I’ve finally learned my lesson. I delegate nearly all tasks that are not part of my core unique brilliance and can be easily done by someone else. It was scary at first to take on that extra overhead. Now I wish I had done it a lot sooner.
Great news is that it’s so easy to outsource nowadays. You no longer have to hire employees – you can simply have one (or more) virtual assistants supporting you with different tasks. You also don’t even need office space; a lot of people (even employees) actually prefer to work remotely.
What holds most people back is the fear of not being able to bring enough income consistently to justify the expense. But if you’re not willing to do this, you’re dwarfing the growth of your business. You might actually find that having the pressure of other people working for you, makes you more focused on growth and profits – not a bad side effect, if you ask me!
In fact, I have since figured out a simple formula that allows me to grow my business without outside funds. It’s this:
PE â OPM â OPT â Greater Success
Let me explain this…
PE stands for Profit Explosion; I explained this strategy in an earlier lesson. I use it to attract OPM – Other People’s Money. Which I can use to buy OPT – Other People’s Time. Which I can use to continue repeating the cycle and continue creating more growth and more success.
It sounds so simple, yet most business owners never figure it out. There’s actually another hidden characteristic here that differentiates the winners from strugglers. But I’ll cover that in my next post…
Iâd love to hear from youâ¦
Whatâs your biggest aha from this article? Are you still working solo? What are your feelings on hiring help? Take a moment and post your comment below.
Adam, my brother from another mother!
I too am a quick study, have always loved to learn the geeky stuff and used to think things like building a website or designing my own ebook cover was being “creative”. Now I see it’s better to use my creativity for other things — especially when someone on fiverr.com is a better designer than I am!
Lisa… It’s so great to see you’re finally catching on! Sometimes the “quick studies” are the last ones to learn the big lessons! Believe me, I’ve been there, too! ;)
Adam:
Excellent food for thought! I’ve been following your proven strategic marketing methods since you were one of the featured experts on Marnie Phersons, Ideamarketers site!
And I’ve been on your list and studying and applying (as best I can) your proven marketing secrets for quite a while! That’s why I’m a little embarrassed that I hadn’t visited your blog before now!
That just changed! Not only will I be studying here way more often, but I’ll be sharing your excellent content all over social media as well!
My biggest “aha” thought from this particular post is, how easy it is to lose sight of the fact that by diverting our time effort and best resources away from things we do really well, and that have the biggest impact on our business; things like strategically planning and marketing our products and services etc.
It cost us far more growth and profits in the end, by trying to save a few bucks on things, we would be far better of outsourcing! Once you put a pencil to it, it seems pretty obvious!
Thanks for sharing and correcting my thinking!
Great aha, Mark. Thanks for sharing. AND and I’m glad you now finally discovered my blog! ;)
Hi Adam!
I agree that delegating is the only way to grow the business. I implement this knowledge step by step but still I am not satisfied. I have a problem with professional VA or a researcher who would help me in determining the clients’characteristics. I don’t know where to find them. Any idea?
Best regards from Poland!