As a business leader, you can’t take everything on or you’ll burn out. Asking for help is essential. Successful business leaders have learned, probably the hard way, that you can’t produce the show, direct the show, play all of the parts, and take the tickets all by yourself. Yes, you’re stressed about labor cost and now, just as your visions are starting to click into reality, you think you can’t afford the extra help. The reality is, if you spread yourself too thin, you risk not being able to wrap your brain around progress. Asking for help, as Lizzie Needham admits to Dylan Reinhart in an episode of NBC’s Instinct, “I learned that asking for help is not a weakness; it’s a strength.” If business leaders try to do everything themselves, they can’t get above each little issue to taking charge of the big picture. Here are 5 reasons you need to feel good, or at least okay, about asking for help:
Spending too much time learning something that others do for a living. Building a business involves developing aspects that might not be your forte. You can’t be good at everything. Okay, so you can put up a basic WordPress website, but is that what you want, a rooky-looking representation of your business? Hire a professional web designer who can assess your site’s needs and deliver a polished website, with all the bells and whistles you need to be competitive in an environment where consumers have little patience. With such stiff competition, online consumers will abandon their carts and move on to the next available vendor if your site isn’t easy to navigate, or your products and services are hard to find.
The learning curve. Are you wasting a good portion of your day on the learning curve when you try to do everything yourself? The content on your site, press releases and other important content can be effectively implemented by writers and marketers to effectively launch your site. Hire a freelance writer or a creative agency to help you with deliverables to start out on the right foot.
Develop a support system. As an entrepreneur, you don’t shy away from new adventures and challenges. The freedom to do your own thing attracts you, and even defines the entrepreneurial spirit. On the flip side, doing everything yourself can lead to burning out if you don’t have systems in place to see you through stressful situations.
Hire some folks to help. Maybe you need a full, or even just part-time, personal assistant to keep things organized and handle administrative tasks or a virtual assistant to help with scheduling and managing emails. Productivity coaches can show you how to optimize your workflow and you can hire experienced extra hands to help fulfill large orders. You lose focus packing and valuable time shipping your orders yourself. Planning for success makes each project more manageable.
Financial management is taking up all of your time. As a business owner, your financial health determines most of your company’s decisions. While watching the bottom line is crucial to running your business, you can easily get caught up in managing your daily financial processes to the point that you don’t have time to focus on anything else. This is where according to Entrepreneur.com, “a trusted adviser” is a must.
Business banking frees up time. Managing your merchant services through a business banker allows you to automate your check deposits, as well as accounts receivable and payable functions. A business banker can free up your time to run your business, in addition to giving you the assurance that your finances are being handled properly by professionals. With access to business loans, credit lines and real time digital resources, such as cash flow insights, QuickBooks and other financial management tools, business banking can help you automate otherwise time-consuming tasks like invoicing and paying your vendors on time.
Overwhelmed by menial tasks. Whatever needs setting up, fixing or troubleshooting, as a small business owner wearing the jack-of-all-trades hat, menial tasks can really suck the life out of your day. Consider those days when boxes of things that require assembly start arriving at your door, while you’re trying to reach tech support because something’s gone terribly wrong with your e-commerce site and your printer seems to have been taken over by aliens. Which fire do you put out first to get back on track and back to making strategic decisions about your business?
Delegate, delegate, delegate. Instead of spending your entire day trying to figure out how to fix your tech issue or assemble some intricate piece of cabinetry, reach out to freelancers and temp agencies that can supply you with skilled personnel who can take care of these things so your day doesn’t just fly by with no progress made on the management side.
If you look at other businesses and say, “How does that work?” It’s like visiting an upscale home, where nothing is out of place, the interior spotless and coordinated and the exterior perfectly manicured. You wonder where people find the time. Then you realize it takes a small army of cleaning people, a lawn care service, a designer’s touch, a housekeeper and any number of other people to facilitate this spot-on look. Well, chances are, those polished-looking businesses that you’re wondering about probably used the services of several professionals to tackle different tasks for each component of their success. It takes a village to grow a small business into a successful venture that keeps on growing.
At Venture X Naples, a wealth of support comes with the territory. With monthly contracts and flexible office spaces for each phase of your development, Venture X Naples’ diverse community represents many industries and professions. Need a website, tech support, SEO content or legal advice? Venture X Naples’ open and welcoming atmosphere inspires collaboration among like-minded professionals. Located in the heart of Naples, Venture X provides the village you need to keep your visions on track. It doesn’t hurt to be right by the beach, either. Contact Venture X Naples at (239) 300-9601 or make an appointment online!
