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CHAPTER 4 BUILDING A BUSINESS THAT WORKS... WITHOUT YOU

Looking at these statistics made Richard realize that there
were many roles that were not getting done. I told him that
if he continues to spend 99% of his time working in his salon
as a stylist and not allocating any time to the other roles, he
will spend his life trapped in his shop till he dies. For any
business to achieve its fullest potential, there must eventually
be someone who spends 40-50 hours on sales, 40-50 hours
on marketing, 40-50 hours on finance, 40-50 hours on
management and so forth.

When I started pointing out all these reasons why Richard's
business was going struggling to survive, his immediate excuse
was, "but....I have NO TIME to do all those things you
mentioned! Even if I did, I have NO IDEA how to do them. I
also don't have the money to hire people to get it done!"

If you have this same response that Richard does, don't worry.
This is the most common challenge faced by the majority of
entrepreneurs! The problem is that Richard, like so many
entrepreneurs I know, focus their time on the WRONG type
of work!

Many entrepreneurs who have the 'employees mindset' allow
themselves to be totally consumed by the technical/operational
work so much so that they never find the time on the
strategic/management work of building the business. It is like
a plane with the engines fired up with no one piloting the
plane and taking it off the ground.

Granted that most of us who start off (with little money) don't
have the luxury of hiring a team of employees to do all the
operational work while we can just focus on the strategic
work. Like most people, I started off with just two other people,

120 SECRETS OF BUILDING MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BUSINESSES