Why You Shouldn’t Do Everything

When you started your business, you might have done a lot of the heavy lifting alone. It’s something to be proud of. 

As businesses grow, they tend to become more complex. Many business owners one day realize that, try as they might, they simply cannot do everything all by themselves. Yet, there’s also a fire that might try to tell you, “I’ve done everything before, I can do everything again.” 

Today, we’ll present some of the benefits of letting others help you compared to some of the pitfalls of trying to do everything yourself. 

1. The Snowball Effect  

At the beginning (and perhaps even now), your business revolved around you. When something important needs to happen, people come to you. It’s similar to making a snowball on flat ground by having people gather snow from somewhere else and bring it to a fixed location. 

But when the business grows, it climbs the mountain. And as any good mountaineer will tell you, having a team makes it easier to reach the peak. Likewise, once you start climbing the mountain, it’s much easier to grow the snowball by rolling it down the mountain than by having people gather snow and bring it to one specific spot. 

Planning for a successful future is similar. As you ascend to the peaks of success, you’ll likely find that it’s a smoother trip with a team of spotters and support. You still lead the charge, but you allow others to help you find the best path forward.  

Their expertise then helps you reach your destination more safely, so you can roll the snowball down the mountain for quicker growth. 

2. Concrete Consequences  

More literally, trying to do everything by yourself can cost you money from unintended consequences. 

You likely have a favored role or supreme expertise in a specific area of your business. As the business grows, you could find that you spend less time on the things you’re incredibly good at just to keep the business growing.  

For instance, say your expertise is in running operations. As the business grows, you need to take on more sales responsibilities. As the sales department grows, you then find you need to consider the tax implications of all this growth. 

Trying to solve all these issues by yourself can lead not only to mistakes and missed opportunities but also take even more time away from the thing that motivated you to start the business in the first place. 

Delegating responsibilities to others—both in running the business and planning for a successful future—can help you avoid these issues while expanding your success. Even better, you still get to have the final say. 

3. Avoiding Burnout 

Over enough time, nearly everyone can experience burnout. This is especially true for business owners like you, who have so many responsibilities to juggle (keeping the business growing, protecting your financial security, looking out for your employees, etc.).  

In many respects, burnout is just a new term for mid-life crisis. But in some ways, it’s on a much bigger scale. Whereas you might buy a Corvette to quench a mid-life crisis, burnout can sap your energy to the point where nothing can motivate you. This, in turn, can have negative effects on business performance. 

Two proven methods to avoiding burnout are reducing exposure to job stressors1 and completing a periodic assessment and realignment of goals, skills, and work passions.2 These are aspects that planning for a successful future, with input from your trusted Advisor Team, can help you tackle while still running a successful business. 

We strive to help business owners identify and prioritize their objectives with respect to their businesses, their employees, and their families. If you are ready to talk about your goals for the future and get insights into how you might achieve those goals, we’d be happy to sit down and talk with you. Please feel free to contact us at your convenience. 

The information contained in this article is general in nature and is not legal, tax or financial advice. For information regarding your particular situation, contact an attorney or a tax or financial advisor. The information in this newsletter is provided with the understanding that it does not render legal, accounting, tax or financial advice. In specific cases, clients should consult their legal, accounting, tax or financial advisor. This article is not intended to give advice or to represent our firm as being qualified to give advice in all areas of professional services. Exit Planning is a discipline that typically requires the collaboration of multiple professional advisors. To the extent that our firm does not have the expertise required on a particular matter, we will always work closely with you to help you gain access to the resources and professional advice that you need.

This is an opt-in newsletter published by Business Enterprise Institute, Inc., and presented to you by our firm. We appreciate your interest.

Any examples provided are hypothetical and for illustrative purposes only. Examples include fictitious names and do not represent any particular person or entity.

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