The Tax Business Myth That Trips So Many

For most of my business life I’ve been the type of person who always wanted to learn how do everything myself.
Even things like fixing code on web pages. It was so difficult explaining what I wanted or finding someone who could fix it, I just learned it and repaired it myself.
I figured it was easier to do it myself than try to find someone else and to communicate what I wanted. It’s made me really good at a lot of tasks. But although I have so many skills, it left me lacking in one important way.
I started figuring out that my approach was all wrong about 5 years ago. I was in a high level mastermind meeting with Bill Glazer (a hugely successful copywriter and consultant). He told me, “I never try to learn how to do something myself. Instead, I find the best person and pay them to implement for me. It’s a lot faster.”
Interesting, I thought. But then, I came up with a whole bunch of reasons why this way was wrong and my approach of doing everything myself was better.
For instance, quality control, independence, investment, the challenge of explaining what you want and a bunch more.
A few months later, I began to discover that Bill is right. Speed of implementation is more important than any of the other “reasons” I had come up with.
The world is changing too fast. By the time you or I go through all the work to learn a completely new business skill, the opportunity may have already passed.
Today, I work with a lot of employees, vendors and partners to help me implement projects and business plans a lot more quickly. I discovered that my problems with communicating what I expect and delegating are skills.
And, the reason I was getting so frustrated was because I hadn’t sufficiently developed those skills. Now I understand that learning how to delegate, communicate expectations and reward success are a lot more important skills than anything as technical as web design or video editing.
For years I told myself I should be self-sufficient. It seemed like a worthy goal. Yet, in today’s world it’s impossible. Our productivity and leverage comes from finding the right people who are experts at what THEY do, and thereby being part of a group of people working together to achieve more than they could if they were each “self-sufficient.”
Whether it’s email marketing, social media, a print newsletter, or other marketing pieces … it’s always good to have an expert in your corner. 🙂