The Real Cost of Doing Everything Yourself in Business
I had a conversation with a fellow business owner recently. I was telling them about our business, what we do, and how we could support them in their business. They asked me a rather specific question that day:“Do you do invoice follow-ups?”Turns out, they wrote off an invoice that hadn’t been paid in a year. Because their business was doing relatively well, they didn’t notice that unpaid invoice and forgot to follow up on it. They were trying to run and remember everything themselves in the business, and that unpaid invoice showed them that there had to be a better way.Another fellow business owner who already knew what they needed was again running their business by themselves and doing very well for themselves, but they’d forget client meetings, networking meetings, and would delay on client work as well because they were verbally booking meetings & would forget to schedule them, had no concrete follow-up system, and the other party would reach out to remind them. When they say “the truth is stranger than fiction”, it’s true. These are real stories and an indicator of what can happen when you try to handle everything in your business yourself. What makes it interesting is that, even though their businesses are doing so well, they still have operational gaps that need to be sorted out. What really gets lost when you can’t watch Everything We’ve heard the phrases that entrepreneurship is like a 24/7 job you got to escape the 9-5, or that you end up having multiple roles instead of the one role you wanted: Owner & CEO (that might be two, don’t judge me, lol). It’s true, frankly. When you start a business solo, you do wear multiple hats, and for a time, it looks like it’s sustainable, but as your business grows and does well, it makes less and less sense for you to do everything alone. Not only is it costing your time, but it also costs you client relationships (think of the one who kept forgetting meetings & follow-ups), collaboration & networking opportunities, and in the long run… money. No matter how well you’re doing, it’s the principle of the matter. If you don’t notice a tiny gap, the tiny gap will become a bigger gap as you grow and will be the weak point that gives your business problems. As the saying goes: “You’re only as strong as your weakest link” And “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” No matter how amazing your goals may be, if those structural gaps in your business are not filled in & built properly to support the weight of your business, it will falter at that very weak point. This isn’t a personal failing; it’s a structural one As I always say (jokingly, but it’s an important saying nonetheless), “It’s nothing personal, it’s business.” Some people might look at these stories and think “Ugh, what are they even running a business for?” Nah. Listen. With the way their businesses are thriving monetarily, it shows that the skill set they have that they built this business on is 1. Necessary 2. Something they’re excellent at. The problem is that not only are they the centre of their business, they also are the structure that’s holding the business together, and that does not work, frankly. We are but human; we cannot be all things to all people, or to our business. “I’m every woman, it’s all in me,” is a song lyric; it’s not a manifesto to build your life on. You can’t be everything in your personal life, and you surely can’t be everything in your business. It does not work; it’s not sustainable, and that’s why your operations are so important. That which is built in the background to help your business run helps catch what you may miss when things get busy, when life lifes and hey, when you’re like “I need a holiday.” You can switch off just a bit knowing that you have structures in place to run when you’re not around to check every little thing. Can you do it all yourself excellently? I’m coming back to this: what we can learn from these two stories is the true cost of trying to do everything yourself. Now, you can argue till you’re blue in the face that “I can’t trust anyone else to do it, I can do it all myself. No one can do it like me,” and I’ll look you dead in the eye and say, “That’s exactly what they said till they noticed an unpaid invoice 1 year later and clients calling them reminding them of their meeting.” Listen, we’re all excellent at things; that’s why you’re doing as well as you are, but why are you trying to split the time between something you’re so good at that you are making good money off of, and something you’re good enough at to keep your business from falling apart? Wouldn’t it be better for you to stick to what you’re excellent at and pay money to have someone maintain your operations, you know, someone who’s excellent at it and makes you and your business look great instead of you splitting your time between things you can hand off? Something to think about. We find (and fix) the gaps before they cost you something What I love about Lucia and me (and yes, I am bragging) is that our business is to get into your business, spot those gaps before they become problems, and plug them up in a way that will work for your business. Now, what does that look like, you wonder? Let me give an example with the stories we talked about: For the owner who kept missing client follow-ups:So they hired a PA when we talked, which was a step in the right direction. Now, assuming the PA is good at Google Workspace because that’s what they use
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