What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Marshall Goldsmith said it first and well in his book by the same name. The entrepreneurial journey is a fascinating and exciting one that is fraught with both joy and pain, but Marshall’s message always holds true.

Entrepreneurs are by nature intelligent, ambitious, and multi-skilled. These traits serve you well in the beginning. Many entrepreneurs start with nearly nothing and create a going concern of a business. Unfortunately, these same traits can become your greatest obstacles to success as you scale up your enterprise.

Why? Because you’ve always had to rely on yourself, and you KNOW you can do a good job of most of the tasks involved in your business. This self-reliance then becomes your worst enemy as you build out a team and scale up your business.

We all know there are only 24 hours in a day, and that we humans have very real limitations in terms of time and energy (don’t we?). When your business reaches a certain size and complexity, you just can’t do it all yourself anymore.

You find it terrifying, however, to turn over important tasks to a member of your team. Seriously, it's your baby that you raised from an infant, right? You know you have an all-star team, but you worry whether they can do the job up to your exacting standards.

What to do? Do you keep your business small so you can keep doing things yourself, or do you scale it up and learn to delegate to a team? Either can work fine to meet your financial goals, but you need to choose.

If you choose to scale up, your business will become more complex. Even as skilled as you are, you just don’t have the time and energy to do everything anymore. Instead, you’ll need to learn new skills like leadership, hiring the right people, strategic planning, and delegation. It can be scary, but it is exhilarating as you succeed.

Welcome to the entrepreneur’s journey—isn’t it a hoot?!

Don’t be a stranger. (770) 993-1129. tdockery@TheResolveFirm.com