The One Thing Small Business Owners/ Content Creators Get Wrong
Jeff Bezos knows the value in it
So you’ve built up a great business but you’re running yourself into the ground as a small business owner/ content creator. What you don’t realize is how much greater your small business or content could be if you’d do one thing better and how you’d feel like you aren’t running on empty anymore. What does Jeff Bezos know that you don’t?
If you’ve ever been your own boss, you know first-hand that a 40-hour workweek isn’t a thing — at least not at first. You take calls, answer emails, and work on the next big project in every waking moment.
Every successful business person knows that the key to expanding your business and doing even greater things is to find trustworthy people and experts at what they do and then delegate tasks to them. Try visiting a multi-million dollar company and tell me the owners aren’t delegating.
Take for example #1 on Forbes list, Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin and The Washington Post. Bezos delegates and empowers employees to experiment and take risks. He is known at Amazon for being the last to speak at meetings. He prefers to listen to what others have to say without influencing them by giving his opinion first (Forbes) thus potentially causing them to be biased.
“The most important word at Amazon is yes.” — Jeff Bezos
How else does Bezos promote a culture of empowerment through delegation? For Jeff Bezos, “the most important word at Amazon is yes.” Bezos explains “in a traditional corporate hierarchy… a junior executive comes up with a new idea that they want to try. They have to convince their boss, their boss’s boss, their boss’s boss’s boss, and so on — any ‘no’ in that chain can kill the whole idea.” Bezos has structured Amazon around “multiple paths to yes (Forbes).”
According to Jeff Wilke, who runs Amazon’s consumer and retail operations, “there is a culture of experimentation and a recognition that there will be failures. Those we sort of celebrate. (Forbes).”
One can use the excuse that they could or would do the better job or they can’t trust someone else to do what they do. The truth is that people can be trained and time will tell how effective they are in doing a certain task or in a leadership role. You can also use the excuse that you can’t afford to pay someone or give a promotion but the truth is, you can’t afford to avoid it.
The Perks
- Free up your time to work on bigger things (that will produce more money)
- Gain a fresh perspective on the work you are hiring out
- Finish more tasks/ projects in the same amount of time
- Allow you to spend more time planning the next project
- Relieve stress from being overworked
- Free up time for things besides work
- Grow your business
Delegating will free up time to focus on the bigger and more pressing things that will help your business thrive. For example, if you are a YouTuber doing well with your videos but are doing all the editing yourself, you might think about hiring a freelance video editor. The time you spent editing your video can now be spent on creating more videos that will potentially bring more revenue.
Another example is if you’re a welder and have more jobs than you can handle, look at hiring an apprentice so they get some experience and you get some help. Who knows, the apprenticeship could turn into a full-time gig helping you.
If your business is stagnant or you’re running on empty, you might be missing something. Why not give it a try to see if delegation helps or not? I dare you to. In this case, the risk is worth the potential reward.
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
My husband, EagleGarrett is a YouTuber and Twitch streamer. He and I both know how much time he spends working as a content creator on both platforms (all the time). When I finally convinced him to hire out a fantastic video editor who we both knew, he’s been able to create more content and in return, more profit. He has extra free time where he has developed a fresh perspective on creating content and is less stressed.
I’m not suggesting at all that you overextend your financial resources to make this happen with your small business. However, it might take a little sacrifice at first to start. For example, you begin trying to save where you can, so you can hire help or give the promotion. The sacrifice might include cutting out restaurant outings for a month or making your own coffee instead of getting it through a drive-thru. For my husband and I, we used money from a sponsorship to cover the cost of hiring a video editor.
The point is, things can get better for your inner entrepreneur and your business without you continually sacrificing your blood, sweat, and tears. If you want to continue down the path of non-delegation, go for it, but know you might be missing out on potential success for your small business with less stress.
