In the early days of my first startup, I couldn’t afford anyone else. So I did everything on my own, from product development and coding, writing letters, paying the rent, billing, banking, accounting or standing in queues to pay the telephone bill..you get the picture.
There is nothing wrong in this, most Entrepreneurs have to do all the work themselves when they begin.
But as resources increase and business grows, it’s important to let go of certain things and responsibilities to free up your time. We must let go of the things we are not experts at. I let go of HR and Operations duties when I was able to do it. I now realize that in the early days I would not invoice customers on time..as I was busy doing other things. This was detrimental for the business cash flows.
Since my background was technology, I spent time sitting with developers and coders in the company etc pushing back other things which needed to be done.
Even today I still do many of the activities today but that’s more from passion rather than control.
I cannot stress enough on the fact that as entrepreneurs we also need to be great leaders.
We must acknowledge the fact that one cannot be an expert at everything. So we must be surrounded by people who are more intelligent and smarter than us and spend the time to find these people. In my previous article I write about the importance of hiring the right team in place.
