Are you holding back your business?

In today's blog post, you will learn, are you holding back your business?

As business builders, sometimes we're gonna have to face some harsh realities. The one we're discussing today is that often when your business starts growing and then plateaus, can be because of you. Yep, you, you're stopping it from growing.

And you might be thinking, Mick, what are you talking about? I want to grow at all costs. I'm an ambitious person.

That could be true and all, but the way you're managing your business and your team is not allowing you to do that. Because at the end of the day, the numbers don't lie.

Today, we’re going to explore whether you’re the bottleneck in your business. If so, we’ll discuss strategies to overcome this issue and ensure your business continues to grow rapidly.

This is a reality I faced in my own business. I was the bottleneck, and I’ll share my experiences and how I overcame it in today’s lesson. Let’s dive in.

When you start a small business, it’s often just you or a few team members. Things move quickly, and decisions are made swiftly. You implement and take action, and progress is made. You close deals and make sales.

However, as your business grows, you’ll face more and more significant decisions. The number of decisions you need to make multiplies. Let me illustrate this with a simple example.

Imagine I own a pizzeria that I just opened. I have manageable initial decisions, such as hiring staff, setting restaurant hours, and choosing the pizzas to serve.

In the beginning, these decisions seem straightforward. But as your business grows, you innovate and expand your menu. You start wondering what to add and what to consider when introducing new items. For instance, if you decide to serve a pineapple pizza, you need to have a backup plan in case your supplier doesn’t deliver the pineapples.

You might also consider delivery, but you’ll need to manage sick delivery drivers. You might even opt for Uber, but this will come with a significant commission that could impact your dine-in customers.

These are just a few examples, and they don’t even consider multiple pizzerias. We’re just talking about a single store.

We haven’t even branched out, franchised, or become a global brand yet. But as we improve, grow, and expand, more and more daily decisions need to be made. Initially, as the founder and business owner, you make all the decisions.

It’s okay because there aren’t many decisions to make at the beginning. However, as you start growing, you’ll find yourself with more decisions than time. There’s only a certain number of decisions you can make each day and give them the right amount of time, right?

Especially when these are significant decisions that will shape the business’s trajectory, it’s crucial to allocate sufficient time for research, understanding the problem, and generating diverse solutions. As you delve deeper, you’ll realise that the number of decisions on your plate can become overwhelming, leading to a slowdown in progress and growth. This is because implementing decisions requires prior decision-making.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we’re accustomed to outsourcing work and labour, but we must also become comfortable outsourcing decisions. By hiring individuals to make decisions, we can reduce the burden on everyone in the company, preventing unnecessary decision-making.

For instance, if you run a pizza place and you don’t have a general manager. Everyone will come to you with questions to make decisions. Delivery personnel may ask me about flat tyres and delivery procedures, while others may bring up issues that require immediate attention.

This constant stream of decisions can become the bottleneck in your business. As your business grows, the number of decisions increases, and it’s challenging to make the right choices consistently. This can lead to a slowdown in progress.

Many businesses face this issue. Great ideas and initiatives often remain unimplemented due to the overwhelming workload and the time required for decision-making, answering questions, and providing support. Outsourcing decision-making can help alleviate this burden and enable businesses to focus on their core competencies.

To make your business truly autonomous, we need to give other people ownership over certain areas.

I want to share two key takeaways that can help you shift your mindset and achieve this.

First, stop believing that you’re the best person for every decision. It’s actually challenging to be responsible for all the different types of decisions in your company. It’s much easier to focus on one specific area, such as sales, marketing, operations, or customer service. If you have one person in charge of a particular department or type of decision-making, they’ll be less overwhelmed and able to make better decisions.

So, let that sink in. You can hire people who are more efficient and can make better decisions for the company because of their focus and expertise.

The second concept is crucial because as business owners and entrepreneurs, we’re often addicted to hard work. We believe that our success is solely due to our efforts. While there’s truth to that, it’s not the only factor.

At a certain point in your business, just hustling and working 16-hour days won’t make a significant difference. You need to work smarter.

And the reason why we work so hard is because this is how we perceive our own value. We think, I got to hustle hard. I’ve got to show my other team members what hard work looks like.

And believe me, I, myself, fall into this trap all the time. But what I'm going to share with you now is the best mindset for your business. And that is Your value is measured by the results of your team, not how many hours you put in or how many decisions you make or how many problems you solve.

It's what your team produces. That's what makes you valuable. If you can cultivate a great team that makes great decisions and produces results, thats the dream.

Many of us think that when it comes to business, we're like the star player on a team. Or maybe we even think we're the coach. I’ve got my players on the pitch.

I'm going to coach them. But in fact, you're neither. You're the team owner.

You're the person that owns the team, the hires the general manager, the hires the recruiters and hires the coaches and the players to make this team work and allow this team to be successful and win trophies. You put the pieces together and your value as a business owner or as a team owner in this metaphor is how successful your team is.

This is a really tough thing to swallow. And it took me some time to think about and rethink about it and let it sink in. And then I started to write down stuff like what can I do different to start moving in the right direction?

I started to consider who I was hiring. Was I hiring workers or decision-makers? I realised I needed to hire more decision-makers.

I need to start delegating decisions. Whenever someone comes to me with a question, request, or anything, I need to start taking notes. Do I need to answer this?

Can I hire someone to do this job and answer these questions? I can write down a few notes, and then by the end of the week or month, I can see what I’ve done.

What do these tasks mean? Who can I hire? Are these positions I can hire?

What are all these responsibilities and tasks in terms of making decisions and answering questions? Is there a position here? Can I hire someone to step in so I don’t have to answer every time someone wants to make a decision or get something done?

This keeps things flowing because I realised I’m quite busy. Sometimes people can’t get a hold of me or I don’t answer immediately. They have to wait a couple of days to get a decision made because I’m not just making one decision every week. I’m making many.

Sometimes I need a bit of time to think about all of them. That’s not fair. It’s not a fun place to work where everyone is waiting around for a decision to be made.

It’s about noticing what you need to do to get things moving in the business. How can I remove myself from the equation and stop being the bottleneck?

Even if you don’t have the budget to hire decision-makers right now, this exercise is still important. Jot down the things you’re constantly doing that shouldn’t be, the decisions you’re constantly making, and who’s coming to you asking questions daily. Identify who can do those tasks instead.

This will help you start cultivating a position and job description. When you can hire someone, you’ll be ready to go. You’ll know who your next hires are and how much they’ll cost.

Do some research on salaries. As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to prepare for the future. This way, when the opportunity arises to fill a gap and stop being the bottleneck in different parts of your business, you’ll be ready to take action.

This process won’t happen overnight. It’ll take a few hires and some time, but it’ll be well worth it.

That covers everything for today.

Got a burning question? Reach out on our social channels or email me at michael@purpleyak.co.uk

Thank you so much for reading.

Take care.