One of the most important decisions an entrepreneur needs to make to build their Dream Business is to release and let go.

You can make an amazing difference in your business with just three words – “delegate or die!”

At the very least, it’s “delegate or experience slow-to-no growth!”

This mindset challenge is one that trips up far too many entrepreneurs, and it is essential that you climb and conquer this entrepreneurial mountain if you truly want to create a dream lifestyle.

How Many Hats Are You Wearing?

In the beginning, most entrepreneurs start their businesses on day one, armed with an idea, a skill, or talent they want to bring to market and build a business.

Whatever your profession, you have a talent that solves problems, provides value, and fills a need.

That is the essence of a successful business.

But something happens between the time you get your business cards and hang out your shingle, and when your growth becomes impeded because you’re not willing to release and let go.

In most cases, I think it’s fair to say that every entrepreneur initially wears many hats running a small business.

In addition to your “skill” hat (whatever you do), you also wear the hat of other personnel within a typical company such as the accountant, customer service rep, delivery person, janitor, head of marketing, legal advisor, and about a hundred more!

As sales grow, so do the demands for the time and attention of the entrepreneur and business owner.

The stumbling block for many entrepreneurs occurs when they hold on too long to the notion that they can do it all.

The Lean and Mean Approach

One common expression you’ll hear around the entrepreneurial water cooler is, “I can do it faster, cheaper, and better than anyone else.”

With full disclosure, you would probably hear, “I’ll be darned if I’m going to pay someone to do something I can clearly do myself. I want that all the money in my pocket.”

Do these words ring true for you?

Have you actually said them to someone, or at least thought them on more than one occasion?

Over the course of my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve gone from being an “I can do it faster, cheaper, and better than anyone else” entrepreneur, to having a support team of nine plus people.

Hire Slow, Fire Fast

Every time I hire someone new, my gut twinges slightly, so I ask myself two really important questions:

1. Is this new person truly essential to my company and necessary for our continued growth?

2. Will this new person either free me up, or free up some other key person on my team, so we can implement more and move this business forward at a faster rate of speed?

Here’s the bottom line regarding personnel: You should hire slow and fire fast.

But, if you need to hire to keep growing – then hire!

If you feel like things aren’t getting done and your progress and speed are not what they aught to be, you should be delegating!

What’s even truer is that you do not hire anyone unless they’re going to increase your profits.

That is really the only reason to “invest” in additional help – to help you make more money!

Invest Money to Make Money

The leap that eludes some entrepreneurs is that at certain times it becomes essential to invest money to make more money.

In 2006, just as I was once again starting over, I decided that I needed a new web site (or two), and I also needed to learn about merchant accounts, autoresponders, and a bunch of other things that were new to me.

At this point, I had five years under my belt as an entrepreneur, and for the most part I did everything.

I had grown a multiple-six-figure business by myself, so I wondered, “Where’s the harm?!?”

The harm was that my time was completely maxed out.

Thankfully, I was in my first mastermind group at the time, and when I talked about all that I was doing already as a solo act, and what more I wanted to do, I was almost laughed at.

At least it felt like it!

One of the more successful entrepreneurs told me that I needed to get a VA (virtual assistant).

“What’s a virtual assistant?” I asked… and the answer changed my life!

Focus on High Revenue-Generating Activities

A virtual assistant is someone who works for you on a project-by-project basis.

They are also entrepreneurs, and they do certain tasks to help other entrepreneurs grow.

I hired my first VA later that month, and that person is still with me today.

Was it scary to take on the expense of additional help?

Absolutely!

But it didn’t take me long to realize that with the new “extra” time I had created, I was able to get more important work done.

I was able to do the type of work that was allowing me to grow, namely “high revenue generating” activities.

Here’s the deal: If you want to earn a million dollars per year, you need to be doing work that is worth $400 an hour (figuring 50 hours per week and 50 weeks per year).

And every minute that you are doing task-oriented stuff that you could pay someone to do for you for $10 to $60 an hour, then you are holding yourself back.

Would you rather earn $400 an hour or $10 to $60 an hour?

Closing Thoughts

If you are concentrating on task-oriented activities… the ones you should be delegating… you have it backward, and I can assure you that you are on the road to slow-to-no growth.

If you are trying to “do it all because you don’t want to pay someone else to do something you can do,” you are the bottleneck to growing your Dream Business.

It’s simple: Delegate or die, or at the very least suffer slow-to-no growth in your business.

Just One More Thing Before We Go…

You’re going to work a lot less hours when you have multiple streams of revenue.

Being in multiple businesses, offering services to your customers across the board, means:

• Less/no dependence on any one client or project to survive and thrive
• More choices for current and prospective clients to invest in you
• Exponentially more opportunities to create businesses you can completely leverage, even if for now your current business requires a lot of your involvement
• The sooner you raise your revenues and boost your profits, the faster you can afford to outsource more of the business that currently keeps you busy

See the scientific approach I used to create this for myself and members of our Mastermind program: