Business Myth – “Hire Workers For The Skills You Lack”

If you aren’t good at a part of your business or you don’t like it, shouldn’t you just hire someone to do that part for you?

This is a really common Myth and a trap that I see business owners fall into, and like all the other Business Myths I’m discussing in these videos, there’s a little kernel of truth that really can trick you and set you up for problems in the future.

So what is the “trick” (or the problem) and what is the kernel of truth here?

The Kernel Of Truth – Hiring People To Do What You Aren’t Good At In Your Business

The kernel of truth is that it is HARD to do certain things.

And if you’re doing a thing that is hard for you and takes you more time and energy, and you could be giving someone else money to do it, you’d be saving time and energy.

You could put these resources towards another thing that you’re better at.

That’s the kernel of truth.

The Problem With Hiring People To Do Things In Your Business You Aren’t Good At

Now, what’s the actual problem?

The problem is moving from that knowledge into the “skills and the implementation” side of things.

If you are “no good at sales and marketing,” and you are afraid of even learning how to do it, then you have almost no ability to

• Vet and hire a qualified sales and marketing expert,
• Train them in the way you’d like to have things done,
• Set realistic goals, expectations, or plans,
• And to actually check up on their performance.

You are essentially at their mercy.

And when you’re at their mercy, things are going to seem to go okay because you have no idea what’s going on… but there’s a very high chance that they’re NOT going to end up very well.

Learning The Business Skills To Succeed

For example – If you just absolutely don’t ever want to do Sales and Marketing, having your own business might not be for you.

Because having a Job is when they do the Sales and Marketing for you, you just deliver on the product.

Learning the skills to get your customers is a part of being a business owner.

It’s a non-negotiable.

You must get (to some degree) familiar with the type of Sales and Marketing that works for your business.

So that’s the first part of the kernel of truth.

Learn A Skill To Earn The Right To Delegate It

The problem there is that you need to know how to do it first so you can successfully train someone else to do it.

Now, learning how to do it yourself, you might spend a month really figuring it out and then pass it off as soon as possible.

You don’t have to do it for years!

You have to do it long enough to know exactly what works and what doesn’t work.

Now whenever you have someone else doing it, you can show them the step-by-step approach to be successful.

You can evaluate what your performance was versus what their performance is.

If you were bad at the skill and you hated it, they should be probably on at least a similar level of performance if they’re supposedly an expert. Now you have a baseline metric to measure their performance against yours.

“Doesn’t Area Expertise Translate Into Them Being Succesful In MY Business?”

The common trap we fall into here is thinking, that “because they’re a salesperson, they’re amazing at sales.”

Now, that can be true, but some key things that a salesperson needs are

1. Knowledge of the product or the thing that they’re selling
2. And a familiarity with a sales process and what the steps are in selling that thing.

If you don’t have those figured out and you’re trying to expect them to do it, you’re hoping that you’re hiring an entrepreneur to figure out your business for you.

And they’re probably going to fail at that.

Or if they succeed (against all odds), that knowledge is in their head.

And the day that they leave or stop working for you or start their own business, that goes with them. That business asset no longer is in YOUR business and you start all over again, which is a giant risk factor.

So it is important to hire people for support to help you learn things, but that is not a way to bypass having to master a skill if you’re the owner of the business.

That’s what gives you the control and the risk mitigation to keep succeeding.

Hire someone when the timing is right, but you have to figure out EXACTLY what that is to pass that off in the future.

Best of luck for you.

Don’t fall for the trap.