By John Quick
As an entrepreneur or business owner, you need to focus on things that move you and your company forward. Time is money. Vision, leadership, and sales must take priority. If you’re not focused on these key tasks, your business will die. It’s not a question of if, but when.
For you to be able to concentrate on these things you need to become an expert in delegating, elevating, and empowering the people on your team to do jobs, take on tasks, and step into leadership roles now. You will need to develop the skills of a ninja in these areas.
But how? How do you get everything that is consuming the bulk of your time off your plate, so you can focus on growing your business? I’ve listed the top five resources necessary for successful sustainability and growth for entrepreneurs.
1. Get a Virtual Assistant
A great VA should organize your life for you and make your days, weeks, and months easier. By doing so, they give you the space to focus on Vison, Leadership, and Sales.
Check Onlinejobs.ph for the best outsourced VAs out there. You can get a full-time VA for around $400 month. And for those negative Nancys out there who say, “I tried a VA once, and it didn’t work,” you need to take a breath, pull on your grownup pants, and try again. Being an entrepreneur and business owner is about hustle. But that means you need out from under the daily busy work that comes along with any business venture, and a good VA will make that happen
This service will drastically increase your efficiently, music to the ears of any entrepreneur. You can also find social media managers, web designers, content developers, and pretty much anything else you can imagine needing on that site. You’ll want to bookmark it for future use.
2. Get help with your bookkeeping
You don’t want to be knee deep in accounting and bookkeeping every week, month, or year. As the owner of a growing business, you need to be 30 steps ahead, not reconciling your checkbook every week. It’s just not an efficient use of your time. If you want to be a bookkeeper, then be one. If you want to be an effective and efficient entrepreneur or business owner, you need a solution.
Do yourself a favor and sign up for Bench.com. Their packages start as low as $150 a month, and you can have the peace of mind knowing you have professionals handling your bookkeeping.
3. Have the right mindset
This really should be #1.
The biggest killer of any business is not the local market or the economy, but your MINDSET. If you are defeated and negative then your business or ideas will be as well, your family will be and so on and so on. Get your mind wrapped around the fact you are amazing; you were made for this, and you are more than capable of kicking ass at being a business owner or entrepreneur.
So please, go to Amazon and get all the books by Seth Godin, Austin Kleon, and Gary Vaynerchuk. These will get your mindset on track, without all the hugs and high fives.
4. Generate branded content
If you have taken my advice and you have hired a VA and a social media manager through onlinejobs.ph, then the next thing you might be thinking is, “How the hell am I going to produce all this content?” Well, let me introduce you to Stencil. This tool can enable your personal brand or business to generate an unlimited amount of memes. People eat these things up and love them. In today’s market, social media is the biggest form of media, so please use it. Physical newspapers and magazines are irrelevant and a dying dinosaur—play the game, use social media and Stencil to produce great images that make sense for your brand.
5. Take time to recharge and celebrate your successes
Work/life balance is the most neglected step when it comes to business ownership and entrepreneurship. TAKE A FUCKING VACATION! You don’t want to be ten years into the hustle and realize your family hates you, and you have forgotten who you are.
This isn’t the same kind of vacation other people take, though. Most people take vacations to get away from their normal life because they’re miserable, and they hate it. You are going to take a vacation to celebrate all the goals, tasks, milestones, and benchmarks you and your team crushed this year.
If you are not recharging you, then you have nothing to offer anyone else. Please, book a damn vacation.
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If you’ve reached this point in your journey as a business owner and entrepreneur and are thinking to yourself, “Man I wish I had all this in place…” then stop what you’re doing and initiate these steps right now. The only person who is going to take action on this is you.
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This post originally appeared at the Good Men Project. Reprinted with permission.
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About the author: As the CEO of Empire Consulting John Quick works with locally owned coffee shops, $750 million companies and everything in between! He helps them build, scale, and grow.
Family and faith come first for John. He also is co-founder and co-creator of The Guild and 425 Collective, both of which are high-profile entrepreneur co-op spaces in the Northwest. John and his wife have been married for 12 years—he often says he’s the “president of the married up club”—and they have three amazing kids.
John is also active in non-profits. He serves on the Board of Trustees for his alma mater, Northwest University, and has received the honor of being named the Alumnus of the Year, twice. You can connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.