“Work in your zone of genius,'' they said. “Hire people to do everything else,” they said. Uh, what if I can’t afford to hire people to do everything else? Where is all this magical money supposed to come from to hire all these contractors and staff to do all the stuff I'm not good at and don't want to do? Don’t these people know I have bills?
That's one of the ongoing entrepreneur dilemmas. Don't worry, I got you. Here's the plan. Optimize within your budget. Instead of committing to a monthly expense to have somebody do this for you all the time, hire somebody ONE time to teach you how to do it better yourself.
Most of us spend a lot of time and energy doing things because we don’t know how to do them well. You’re an entrepreneur. You’re tough and you’re smart. You know how to learn, how to adapt, and how to get stuff done. If it takes you forever to do your bookkeeping or social media it’s not because you can’t do those, it’s probably because you don't have much experience at bookkeeping or social media.
Let’s take social media as an example. If you were to hire someone to handle all your social media marketing for you every month it would cost you at least $1000 per month… and that’s being really conservative. So if you can’t afford to staff it out entirely, spend $1000 one time to hire someone to teach you how to do it decently on your own. (That could be 1:1 coaching, group coaching, buy their book, or take their online course.) You might not do as good of a job as they would, but you’ll get something done. And progress is better than perfection.
Once they’ve helped you create a plan and taught you how to do it, actually doing the work won’t take you as long. You won’t expend so much energy because you won’t be so frustrated anymore. You’ll get a few posts up and gradually you’ll get better and faster at it. Then once you’ve done enough to grow your business to the point where you can hire that person to handle it all, you’ll be able to go back to them and hand it off. Alternatively, if you're bringing on staff, you'll have the skills to train them well.
Use this plan for bookkeeping, marketing, sales, and anything else you would love to staff out but can’t just yet. If you have to do the job anyway you might as well optimize yourself by hiring someone to coach you on how to get the job done well. Then when you’re ready, you can hire someone to take over and focus on what you do best.
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Enjoy the journey.