More Than WE Know

If you were here last Monday, then you know I had reduced the number of goals I wanted to accomplish this week.  I already knew then that that this was going to be a challenging week for my business. I had to do a lot of traveling: Phoenix to NY to Ohio and then back to CT, all in about 5 days.  During the midwest portion of my trip I’d be visiting family and friends so I’d have no opportunity to squeeze in any “computer time” without being rude. 

But I thought I had a plan for keeping on track - it included working in airports and on airplanes and not getting much sleep.  As you can tell by the skimpy blog posts this past week - that plan fell flat.

Like many women entrepreneurs, I took on a bit more than I could handle and in an effort to be “everything to everyone”  I fell a bit short on some of my goals.

But as my youngest son told me when he was only in kindergarten “It’s not a mistake if you learn from it”.  So, I am looking for lessons we can all learn from my less than productive week.

The biggest insight I have for the week is that I should have delegated more.  If I had realized how unrealistic my plans were, I might have looked for ways others could have helped me.   This hit me today when I was doing my own surfing of the internet:

1) Hire someone; Shama Hyder at her cool blog After the Launch recommends hiring a ghost writer for entrepreneurs who want a blog but don’t have time to post.  She is talking about hiring someone full-time, but I assume it is also possible to hire someone to fill in on vacations, etc.  

2) Borrow from someone; Publish pre-written articles by authors who write on related topics. Hurlburt Insurance  posted an article I had recently published on ezinearticles.  They got free copy and I got additional readers sent to my blog. I could have done the same with articles other authors had submitted for publication.

3) Ask someone; I’ve met many wonderful women entrepreneurs in my social networking with MyWomanOwnedBusiness. I’m sure several of them would have been interested in being “guest bloggers” while I was visiting family.  It would have given them additional exposure for their business and an opportunity to try blogging on for size to see whether it’s right for them long-term.

The point is that I fell into the trap of thinking that I was the only one who could write the posts for this blog, since it was afterall my blog.  But in reality, it might have been nice for all of you to get exposure to additional people and viewpoints as well.

So, how can you apply these lessons in your own business?

How many of you believe that you are the only one who can service your customers, create your designs, and make all your decisions?

And if you do, how is that limiting your options? How is it keeping you from growing? How much of your day is spent on focusing on the details and upkeep of your business and how much is spent on long-term strategy and vision?

The bottom-line is that emergencies are going to happen and opportunities are going to present themselves - the more critical you make yourself to your business, the less flexibility you are going to have in responding to those unforeseen events.

So, even if you are a solo-entrepreneur in business by herself, there have to be ways to find backup, support and emergency plans.  It’s likely it will take high degrees of creativity and advance planning - but anything else is unrealistic and unsustainable.   

What challenges do you face in delegating tasks in your business? What solutions have you found?

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