Control Blocks Money
Control Blocks Money
If you’re an entrepreneur who can’t seem to break 6-figures, read this.
I used to really struggle with control.
I would find myself riddled with anxiety when I wasn’t able to perfectly scheme the outcome of a scenario for my business, or struggle during waiting periods where all I had left to do was worry, feverishly.
I hated not being able to control the success or failure of my outputs, the notion of just “letting things run” sounded obscene to me, so I was determined to have my hands on everything that happened in my business.
Social media content? I had to do the design.
Customer emails? That had to be me answering.
Strategy meeting? I always had to be there.
Bookkeeping? Of course, I’m doing it.
This was what happened as a result of being hands-on in every part of my business — I burnt out for a solid 12 months. I was no longer in a mental state to work and didn’t have the energy to do much. My business also ended up being run pretty mediocrely, turns out I’m not an all-in-one expert in marketing, customer service, and accounting.
By holding on so tightly to all areas of my business, I kept my business small. It’s impossible for one person to give multiple 8-hour days to all arms of a business.
I realized that this hunger for control was impacting my ability to bring in substantial revenue for my business. In fact, I put a definitive ceiling on it.
Whether you’re a new business owner, or have been in the game for a long time and cannot seem to break your less than 6-figure revenue ceiling, the answer to your struggles may lie in loosening the grips you have on your business.
Here’s a step-by-step on how to actually do that.
Step 1: Categorize Your Responsibilities
To resign the control you have over your business, you first need to bring awareness to how much you have on your plate.
Look at all the responsibilities you undertake within a month of your business and categorize each responsibility under the following categories:
Administrative
Marketing, Sales, Design
Financials
Operations
Strategy
Through this exercise, you will have separated your tasks according to ease of automation and outsourcing, with administrative work being the easiest and strategy being the most difficult to automate/outsource.
Step 2: Focus On The Needle Movers
Once you’ve organized your tasks, identify what your needle movers are — what are the specific tasks that will directly push sales and drive growth for your business?
Here’s why I highlight specific tasks — there are plenty of tasks that will push sales and growth for your business, but do so broadly.
For example, social media can definitely drive sales for you, but it’s not all social media posts that do this. It’s the sales-oriented posts that accomplish this. So in the case of social media, it would only be the sales social media posts that are your needle movers.
Identify other needle movers within your business — especially within your marketing, sales, and strategy departments.
These needle movers are usually the tasks that no one else can do but you. These are tasks that should be prioritized as a to-do list you can only do moving forward.
Step 3: Automate What You Can, Hire For What You Can’t
This is where things get hard for those of you who love control.
In this last step, you’re going to take all the tasks that were identified in step 1, but remove the tasks that are identified in step 2. The remaining tasks are the tasks you should automate or outsource.
There are plenty of automation tools like social media schedulers, email marketing software, and more that should be leveraged to your full advantage. (Good rule of thumb: if you need to complete an action more than once, look for an automation tool to do it for you.)
When it comes to outsourcing, I recommend taking baby steps. Don’t feel the need to hire an operations manager for example, right from the onset, especially if you don’t have the budget for it. Instead, break down the tasks you need completed and hire for mini-tasks such as an email marketing copywriter or a bookkeeper.
This allows you to still leverage outsourcing for your business but in a way that is affordable and feasible for you.
Once you integrate a freelancer into your business, it won’t be easy. There will definitely be hard moments where they don’t get things right — the key here is to learn from those mistakes and build a system to guide future freelancers to work for you effectively moving forward.
What Happens As A Result
As a result of automating and outsourcing more, you’ll find that you have more time, and that many things in your business are now functioning without you. The benefits of this are:
Your mind doesn’t have to spend any time thinking about tasks that have very little impact on your business’ growth.
Your mind has more time to think /strategize about how to scale the business to 6-figures.
You have more time to spend to experiment with getting the business to 6-figures.
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