Are you being an entrepreneur when you should be a contractor in your business?
I recently watched a video of Russell Brunson, where he compared entrepreneurs to building contractors. And what he said resonated so strongly with me so I thought I’d share the analogy with you here.
I don’t know about you, but it’s a point of pride for me that I can do all.the.things in my own business. I use the word ‘can’ here because sure, I can do all.the.things. But the question is, should I be doing all.the.things?
That’s kinda the point of Russell’s story, so let me share his comparison.
Let’s start with building contractors
When you want to build a house or perhaps remodel an existing home – you’re going to work with a contractor. What does that contractor do? Do they do any actual building? No – they coordinate a team of subcontractors who do the actual work. So if you need a bricklayer, they find a bricklayer, if you need a plumber they find a plumber. And so on. They put together a team of people to complete the construction project. And if you have a good one they get the job done on time 🙂
Now, what do we as entrepreneurs do?
Well we try to do it all ourselves, right? Irrespective of whether we know how to do the thing – we’ll still try to DIY it. Is it the most productive use of our time to figure out how to do our own books? Probably not. Would it make more sense to pay a bookkeeper to do it for us so we can spend that time acquiring more clients? Absolutely. Then why do we stubbornly cling to the notion that we have to do.all.the.things in our businesses.
I know that there are things in my business that I should be handing over to people who are specialists. Things that I ‘can’ do but that are not the best use of my time.
Where are you being an entrepreneur instead of a contractor in your business?
Where should you be building a team instead of doing it all yourself? What can you hand over to someone else so that you can focus on things that fall within your own zone of genius?
For me, that’s definitely the accounting and taxes side of the business. Sure, I ‘can’ do it – but I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than have to prepare another income statement. It’s definitely time for me to get a bookkeeper!