When a business is growing, it can be hard for the owner to delegate more responsibilities to employees. The entrepreneurial spirit that drives you to start your own company and make it a success is often the same energy that makes it difficult to loosen the reins a bit and hand off control of certain aspects to others.
But not only do you no longer need to do everything yourself once you can hire help — you shouldn’t try.
One of the contractors featured in this issue learned that lesson firsthand. About nine years after Kyle Baxter founded his Iowa-based drain cleaning company, AccuJet, he realized he was incredibly busy but wasn’t seeing the results he wanted.
“Everything was just a scramble,” he recalls. “I was constantly putting out fires and never moving forward — working in the business, not on the business. Plus, I thought I had to do everything, which was hurting the company.”
Baxter realized he needed another approach. He did some research online and hired a business coach to help him figure out a path to move forward in a better direction. “We started digging into things like core values and processes and procedures,” he explains. “The coach also persuaded me to hire a salesperson. He helped me realize I had to delegate things to other people.”
It’s humbling to realize you need help. Even more so to realize you may have been hindering your own progress. But what Baxter gained was very much worth learning that lesson and letting go of some of the responsibilities he was shouldering on his own.
You may not need or want to hire a business coach. But if your company is growing and your own role hasn’t changed in years, it’s probably worth your time to sit down and analyze what is working, what isn’t, and what you can delegate to some of your employees.
For one thing, you might not be adept at everything anyway. If you’ve never really felt that comfortable doing market research or posting on social media, tap someone else to take that on. Play to your strengths and put your focus and energy into what you enjoy and what you’re good at.
Handing off some tasks to your employees, hiring a marketing firm to handle your advertising and social media, or promoting someone to a general manager or operations role can also help you avoid burnout and provide you with more time for friends, family and your hobbies.
Another reason to share the load is to make use of the talents of the people working for you. You saw potential in them, or you wouldn’t have hired them. Giving your employees more responsibility is also a way to build trust and to get them more involved and invested in the company.
Take it from Kyle Baxter: “When you realize you own a business, not a job, you get more personal enjoyment because you’re actually building a business by putting the right people in the right positions. All I had to do is get out of the way.”
I hope you enjoy this month’s issue.
