Written By: Chris Tolley (Director of Operations)
Jan 19, 2020 | 11:20am
Every entrepreneur inevitably hits a point where they start to feel trapped in their own business. You feel like you won’t have money coming in unless you’re directly working for it, but you ALSO have to manage all the behind the scenes parts of the business that don’t directly make you money.
Customer relations, bookkeeping, website maintenance, social media posts, emails, invoices; all of it adds up to take just as much time, or even MORE time than the money making parts, and combining all of that together leaves you with ZERO time to work on actually growing your business into the money-making machine that you dreamed of in the first place.
The solution of course, is to start handing off the menial, time-consuming work to someone else, so you can focus on growing the business. Rather than hiring an expensive full-time employee, the most cost-effective option is simply a Virtual Assistant, but so many entrepreneurs are stuck in fearful, false mentalities that hold them back from starting outsourcing.
Instead they stay comfortable (which is MUCH more painful to an entrepreneur!). Before we can move forward, you must be aware of these mentalities that don’t let you grow.
Below are the top 5 mentalities I’ve seen and heard from entrepreneurs who are stuck.
False Mentality #1: Superman syndrome
What is it: You think that you are the only person who can do what needs to get done. You must do everything because no one else is reliable, and therefore will lose your business and your reputation. Instead of letting any chance of that happen, you always decide to just bite the bullet and do whatever is needed, even if it means jumping in the way of others who have said they can do the task.
Why it’s bad: This mentality is horrible because you can NEVER grow. You will stay the same. You will always be stressed. You won’t have any time for family or friends. You will be controlled for life by your business. Always, 100% of the time, no exceptions.
False Mentality #2: Tasks aren’t hard, so I’ll just do them myself.
What it is: This is the mentality of you thinking that because some tasks aren't that hard, because they only take 5 or 10 minutes, that you can just do them yourself.
Why it’s bad: This time adds up! Think about it -- just six 20 min tasks each week turns into a slogging 2 hours of boring work that could be outsourced away for a measly $5. Would you pay $5 to not have to these boring tasks week after week? What if you turned that 2 hours into “sales hour” and called new clients? How much further ahead could you be in a year? Not to mention, it’s these small tasks that kill your soul! They eliminate the creativity and freedom you went into the sport of entrepreneurship for!
False Mentality #3: Frugality (aka: see spent money as “spent” instead of “invested”)
What is it: This mentality is important, but it’s also dangerous if you plan to grow. When you spend money in your business, you should ask yourself the simple question “is this an investment in the future?”, meaning will it save time or make you more money in the long run.
Why it’s bad: It lets your competition get ahead of you and it can squash the sparks on the fire if there is nothing being invested for growth! Business is a risk, but you are already on the risk taking path and will have many more risky decisions to make!
False Mentality #4: I don't have enough hours of work to fill, therefore I should wait to get a VA to get maximum value
What is it: This is the mentality that tricks you into thinking that you MUST have 40 hours of work ready to go for your VA before you hire them (and all the while you are running circles around yourself doing tasks).
Why it’s bad: If you are stuck in this mentality, there are a couple of possibilities. If you feel you have been working like a dog but don’t have enough hours of “menial” work to hand off to a VA, it’s possible that you haven't really thought about how to pull apart tasks and systemize them to make them easy for someone else to do.
It’s also possible that you might be early enough in your business that you truly don’t have dozens of hours of work in a week to hand off. However, even if you only have 10 hours of menial work a week to start with, you are still accelerating your growth early on by handing off tedious tasks to a VA and increasing your own work capacity..
False Mentality #5: It’s going to take too long to get my VA up to speed, I’ll do this later.
What is it: You think that the task of organizing your business and getting a VA up to speed will take too long, so it’s not worth doing.
Why it’s bad: The longer you don’t organize your business and get it ready to hand off to others, the longer you will wallow in stress, hell weeks, and BS tasks. By simply taking the initiative to get organized and get tasks off of your shoulders and onto someone else, what you will see is that having a VA is a COMPOUNDING activity that makes your life and business easier with each day.
