freelance jobs, writing, design

Entrepreneurs, Get Over It! Let Go and Prosper!

Posted September 14, 2007 in Productivity 4 Rockin' Comments »

Hello folks, today we have a article by Chad from MarketingCT. Chad says he’s an addicted entrepreneur, I believe him! :) - Jon

A List of Do-Not’s:

Do not be a specialist, do not be a generalist, do not be an everything-in-the-whole-world-needs-to-be-done-this-way-ist. Just be the entrepreneur that everyone flocks to, the leader that people want to follow, and then let everyone who does something good, do that thing good.

Sounds like common sense right?

Boy, is that wrong!

People, for some reason, have a tremendous time letting the reins of an operation go. They want as much of their own personal touch as possible on every single project; to the tiniest detail! I can feel people nodding their heads up and down right now in positive affirmation.
No!
No, no, no! Get over that. That is about as useful as taking your child to the barber shop and then grabbing the clippers and doing it yourself because the haircut didn’t have enough of your “signature” on it!

Listen: Did you go to a barber? Did you go to him because you’re pretty confident he can cut hair? …let him cut hair!

If there’s anything specifically “signature” that you want to get across to your son or daughter’s haircut, work on competent communication that will express that idea to the professional that you’ve enlisted.

And, hint: Taking control of things is NOT communicating. It’s easy to just do it for the confused “learner”. It’s difficult to communicate it. I challenge you to start beefing up communication.

But, but, Chad…

Some people are whining right now. Communicating to people who “just don’t get it” is difficult; I know.

Stop. Soak it in. Move on.

People all around you are very good at things. You are good at things; they are good at things. If you’re the entrepreneur, you’re probably very good at organizing or communicating. In that case, we’re off to a good start here.

Build on that and let the people around you excel in the things that they’re good at.

A Case Study — The Roof Birthday Bash.

The night was dark, drenched with the warm humid touch that compliments the tropical island of Puerto Rico. City lights dotted the concrete town of Condado; where my condo resides. Waves marched rhythmically on the sandy beach to one side of us and traffic buzzed by on the streets below; on the other side.

Twenty-five people laughed and toasted on the roof above. It was a big night for my fiancé and a splendid party in general!

There was music, a sliding picture show on a big flat-screen TV, food, and drinks with a lot of laughs and smiles. The party was wonderful; the 48 hours leading up to it were a rat race!

First of all, it’s tough to surprise an adult woman. Our significant others are a bit more intuitive than we often give them credit for ;) We’re not talking about your five year old’s surprise party here!

Secondly, anyone who’s hosted a party recently knows that there’s a good amount of effort that goes into any well coordinated party. A Lot of effort!

Two types of people emerge at the onset of things like these.

1. You find the oh-oh-pick-me, pick-me (hands waving in the air) type, who are ready to organize, orchestrate, prioritize, and demonstrate everything needed for this party. That person’s going to have it done. And, to her credit, occasionally you have that super-woman who, somehow, in someway, gets the entire thing done herself! …and then she becomes a part of the decoration, slumped over like a crumpled being at the door, as everyone else enjoys her efforts.
2. You find the true leaders, those that embrace the true entrepreneur spirit, those who prefer doing more with less. He emerges and takes on the endeavor because he either had to (i.e. it was for his fiancé) or because everyone naturally looked to him to get it done. (i.e. it was for his fiancé.)

The first mentioned gets everything done with a whirl-wind of furry, occasionally glancing in a mirror to wink at herself. The second, rather, chooses to approach it via the time-honored “smarter not harder” approach.

Smarter-Not-Harder it Now.

Some delegation choices are plain natural. Hence the reason I find such astonishment when some entrepreneurs refuse to delegate things.

Compare my party to everyday life and see how much of your business you can make correlate. You might say that your business is, indeed, no such party and find yourself insulted at the mere notion. In turn, I might tell you that you’re taking this entirely too seriously and should loosen up and learn! Everything in life correlates to business.

The Quick Delegations.

Identify the things or tasks of which the learning curve is too steep for you to realistically grab control of and also accomplish the mission; the objective. There is freedom in asking for help! (hint: if you have a problem “asking”, just think of it as “delegating”. Take whichever perspective works for you.)

A big one for me was the fact that I could, in no way, identify every single friend that my fiancé has had through university, church, and grade school here in Puerto Rico, outside of our smaller mutual group of friends. No way.

And you know what? I really didn’t want to either. That’s too much information. I have an objective to meet, we’re throwing a party, and the time that I would need to invest in meeting (or calling) each and every one of these people is just not practical!

Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point (Little, Brown, and Company, 2000), highlights the 150 rule, or the magic number of 150, in relation to human relations. In short, throughout history, it’s been noticed and recorded that humans operate, efficiently, in circles of no more than 150. At that point, the amount of accumulative information that you need to hold between yourself and the other 149, as well as each other 149 between themselves, becomes overwhelming and the group “clicks” apart.

Anyway, it wasn’t feasible for me to track all these people down and I wasn’t interested in taking on that load. But one of her friends was. And that makes total sense! They grew up together and, although she’s probably not as close with all of them, she could certainly track them down with no problem.

So your problem has been delegated to another who is quite capable.

Make the Connections

This can be pointed out in all kinds of business transactions. You know how many great ideas go unexecuted because the idea-holder (the soon-to-be-entrepreneur) doesn’t know how to erect the structure for it? And do you know how many talented people out there don’t have the ideas to hoist with their skills? I would wager to say that the missed connections are as many as we have people who haven’t met each other yet!

Some people have ideas that are dying to explode on the internet but they know nill about HTML or CSS. You could use a ready-bake program like wordpress, blogger, or squarespace, but even there is a learning curve. You could also enlist the neighborhood 15 year old, who has a nack for it, to do it for you. Or hook-up with a talented 20 year old from India advertising on elance.com

Some people have an angle or perspective on things that make anything newsworthy, but they know nothing of writing a press release! Somewhere, probably near, there is a studying journalist or a frustrated reporter who doesn’t have a story to fill a five minute spot on someone’s show or media platform

And here’s one you might truly enjoy: Some business owners hate keeping and/or just don’t keep the books like they should (raising my hand over here.) And believe it or not, some people really do this well. They actually quite enjoy seeing all the numbers come together. Enlist help!

You might have to pay for it but the amount of time that you regain (to do things like create more master plans — while sitting on the beach [but who really cares where you are]) is priceless! Seriously! It would only take you five minutes to make that MasterCard commercial in your head. Just insert whatever thing you’d rather be doing at the end of a list of all the things you don’t really want to do, and then say the word “priceless.” …priceless ;)

Leading the Dirty Way; the Better Way

Take on “your share” of the load, and get everyone else on board with the mission.

The best leaders (we will use this word interchangeably with entrepreneurs) lead, and have led, by example.

Delegating responsibility out doesn’t mean delegating it all out. You are still responsible for the most important aspect of it; the final product. Always remember, if everything hits the fan, your reputation is the one that’s on the line. Not those that you delegated to. This is the defining acknowledgment that separates strong leaders from cry-babies.

You are responsible. If things go great, you get praised and, in turn, you pass that reward onto your team (I promise you that you were nothing without them!). They get acknowledged. If things go miserably wrong, it is all your fault! …and only your fault. And rightfully so. You probably screwed up somewhere. So accept the blame and pass it to no one else. Got it?

Leading by Example.

Pick the task that you know you’re going to do well and take complete charge of that. That is the weight that you carry while “everyone carries their own weight.”

For me, for this party, it was drinks and a birthday cake.

Sound simple? I beg to differ. You have obviously not recently bought enough drinks to cater to 25 different people.

Drinks and Cake.

Everything else, delegation! Here’s an example: As I was filling a grocery cart with several cases of beer, wine, and rum, my friend posed a potential hurdle. (Think of everything as hurdles! Never are they show-stoppers.) He asked if we had a portable radio; music.

I sure don’t.

Is it time to stop shopping for the drinks and cake? Don’t have time. Focus on what you’re supposed to do; take five minutes to delegate a solution if you need.

I called another friend whom I had invited. “Nick; how are you?”

“What’s up, Man?” He answered.

“Do you have a portable radio?” I asked.

“Ah, no, man. I don’t.”

“You know anyone who does?”

He thought for a second and came back, “Let me find out if Jon does.”

“Great. Listen, we really need music for tonight. I didn’t think of that. Can you take care of it?”

“Got you, brother. No problem.”

The problem has now been delegated. You’re back to focusing on your task.

People Are Competent.

Let people be the competent adults that you know they are! The number one way for an entrepreneur to stifle his or her progress is to micro-manage everything!

Notice that I didn’t specify what type of radio that I needed Nick to bring. I didn’t tell him where to look, I didn’t tell him how to find it. I could have thought of five other ways to get that radio, and solved it myself, but that defeats the entire purpose of enlisting help! You have something bigger to do.

If you have competent help, identify the problem and let them solve it! Let’s replay how that was communicated, in paraphrase. “Hey, Nick, I need some music for the party, I forgot about it. Can you accomplish that?”

He answered, “Yep. Sure can. I’ve got it for you.” He already knew that it was a party on the roof and, being a competent adult, I’m sure he can assume that it should be easily transported but sufficient enough to entertain a party of people.

If you don’t have what you consider competent help (i.e. you ask for music and they show up with a jack-in-the-box, and look proud.), get rid of them and find competent help. You are hurting yourself and your business if you entertain anything other than competence.

Too Much “Planning” Equals No “Doing”!

I might hold myself to saying that I think “meetings” are completely worthless! At least in the sense that most of big-organization America uses them.

If I spent time gathering all the people that I knew could help me with this party, and then spent more time writing all the things that I thought needed to go into this party, and then took more time to vote on who we thought would be best for each task, my fiancé would walk in on us all 2 days later, still planning, and wonder what was going on. Surprise?

Focus on the objective and then delegate as you see the need. Start doing and you will quickly realize what else needs to be done; quicker than you will ever get in a meeting. Meetings do serve their purpose, but more often than not you are left with some pseudo-plan that gets completely changed as you go along!

As I was doing, I realized many things. We needed power (we were on a roof); we needed a way to protect the electronics if it should sporadically rain (we live in the tropics); we needed a place for people to sit; we needed to arrange a way that two separate circles of friends, coming together for the first time, didn’t click off in separate circles. We needed a system to get all the guest through the five locks required to get through the condo’s security. (No lie. They’re a little lock-happy out here.)

The point is, there were a lot of things that we needed, and trying to make a list of those would have given us this entire mountain of hurdles to stare at as opposed to a manageable series of requirements!

Talented People Will Arise in their “Natural” Environments!

This is the last point that goes along with the whole picture here. As you’re doing, you will notice who needs the delegation.

Let’s use an example that will illustrate my “guy-ness.” I got a great gift for my fiancé. But not everyone who is great at picking gifts is great at wrapping them. So I bought a cute shiny bag to put it in. Then I thought about something to make that bag look good. I bought a couple of the pretty tinsel type tissues and stuffed them in the bag. It was far from professional. As a matter of fact, the presentation of it pretty much sucked.

When my friend and his girlfriend arrived (they were helping me set up), Samantha (his girlfriend) saw the bag.

“Oh, Chad.” She said with a grim look.

“Yeah.” I replied. “I was trying to get a little dazzle effect with the…”

“Do you mind?” She said, with eager eyes, pointing to the bag, cutting me off.

“Hey. Make it yours!” I replied with total consent.

Two lessons here. First, I wasn’t offended. It’s important to understand that there are quite a few things in this world that you are not very good at. (dare we say, many?) Second, someone wanted to help and I let them run with it!

In two minutes, with minimal effort, she arranged those tissues as skillfully as a mom fixes her son’s hair (with only fingers and spit) before church starts! It was wonderful! And even better, it was off of my mind. I could focus on the guest that would be here soon.

Later on in the night, I was hanging balloons and she suggested a nicer arrangements. I replied with the same enthusiasm as I had before. Take free reign here! Then, I was no longer slave to balloons! (I hate balloons!). I had someone that enjoyed doing it and someone that was good at doing it on my side!

I knew she was competent because I saw what she did with the gift earlier.

In Closing.

There’s a wonderful freedom that comes with learning how to control everything by “controlling” nothing!

Start letting go today! Really. Identify the talented people around you and give them some responsibility. The biggest job for you, as the entrepreneur, should be giving everyone around you a mission that they can all get behind!

After that, you check in as you feel you should (which will be less and less as your trust grows with each individual) to ensure that the tasks you need done are getting done in support of your objective.

It Feels Good!

People feel great in accomplishment and everyone really loves to help; especially with the things they’re good at!

You’re asking for a low ceiling on your business, and undue stress, by taking on everything yourself; in your own way! Even better, though, when you embrace this for your business, you’ll notice your entire life become more productive as well. Or vice a versa; do this in your life, see your business become more effective.

Start dancing in the wonders and talents that people around you have and learn how to maximize everyone’s potential! At that point, you learn how to make money “grow on trees!”

Take care,

Chad

******

Chad is an addicted entrepreneur. He runs two businesses in Puerto Rico and brainstorms a fight against financial ignorance in his spare time. He rants about cash-flow, marketing, and basic business practices on MarketingCT as an off-shoot of his everyday doings. His biggest mission has become to make others rich. In that, there is a good, good feeling ;)