The Daily Entrepreneur: 33 Success Habits for Small Business Owners, Freelancers and Aspiring 9-to-5 Escape Artists by S.J. Scott & Rebecca Livermore

Author:S.J. Scott & Rebecca Livermore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2014-10-23T07:00:00+00:00

ESH #15: Focus on Your Strengths

Many entrepreneurs have a “can do” attitude, which is often a requirement if you want to succeed. Unfortunately, this attitude often leads to a dangerous mindset where you feel like you need to do everything yourself.

For example, if you create all of your own content, do all your own bookkeeping, handle customer service and tweak your website design (even if you’re not good at all those things), you end up hindering the growth of your business.

You need to bootstrap when you first start your business, but once money starts coming in, it’s important to focus on your strengths and hire people to do everything else.

Think of it this way: If you focus on your weaknesses, not only does a task take longer to complete, but it won’t be done as well as it would be if you let an expert do it. In fact, the time you spend on it could have been better spent working on the tasks you do better than anyone else.

To illustrate this point, let’s talk about Chris Ducker and his 3 Lists to Freedom concept.

This is an exercise that both Steve and Rebecca completed when attending a Business Breakthrough event with Chris Ducker and Pat Flynn. (It was this exercise that led Steve to hire his virtual assistant, Glori, who is now a valuable part of his team.)

Here’s how this process works:

** Grab a piece of paper and a pen.

** Draw two lines down the middle of the paper to create three columns.

** In column #1, jot down whatever you hate doing on a day-to-day basis.

** In column #2, jot down what you’re struggling with. These are tasks that need to get done, but you’re not good at doing them.

** In column #3, jot down the tasks you shouldn’t be doing. You may like doing these things, but they aren’t the best use of your time and could be done by someone else.

After doing the exercise, you will have a list of tasks that can be delegated or outsourced.

Depending on where you’re at financially, you may not be ready to hire someone for every item on this list. However, you can start with little projects and go from there.

If money is a big concern, you may also want to look into outsourcing to countries such as the Philippines because the cost is lower than it would be if you hired someone based in the United States.

For example, Rebecca has two part-time team members who are in the U.S. She has also used oDesk to hire people from different countries. These people completed random tasks for her at a very low cost. This keeps her overall cost of outsourcing low but provides her with a good deal of support.

Steve hired a full-time VA through Chris Ducker’s agency, Virtual Staff Finder. Because she is located in the Philippines, the cost is lower than it would be if he hired someone located in the U.S. He also has a handful of contractors in the U.

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