PP 353: I’m the Bottleneck in My Business

Kim Sutton: I hope you figured out by now that I am very transparent on the Positive Productivity Podcasts. I talk about what I’ve gone through, what I’m going through, and what I would like to experience in the future. 

So today, I want to share with you the one biggest thing that I see that is holding me back right now. I’ve heard, and you’ve probably heard in the past that we share the message that we need to hear ourselves. And the three pillars of Positive Productivity are self care, systems and support. Right now, for probably the first time in my entrepreneurial life, self care is not my struggle. Support, actually, yes, my businesses are expanding every single day. But for some reason, I continually hold myself back from adding onto my team the support that I need to help me keep up with all this growth. Even though my self care is in line right now, every single day is stretched a little bit more. And if I allow it to continue like this, that I’m going to be right back to where I was three years ago, sleeping two to three hours a night, and going down a very dark hole. We all need support in our business to take care of all the tasks that we shouldn’t be or don’t have to do ourselves. 

If you’re listening and you’re wondering what type of support are you looking for, I’m just going to tell you. I’m an Infusionsoft Certified partner, a Launch Manager, a Marketing Automation Strategist, and there are so many areas that I could use support in. While I do have previous team members that I can reach out to, and I will, I am constantly on the lookout for people who are experienced in ClickFunnels, Leadpages, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, ConvertKit, ontraport, WordPress, Canva, you name it. If you are educated in any type of technology that would be useful in the marketing automation process, then I would love to hear from you. I can’t be doing it all by myself. And my team at the present moment has our hands full. I want to be able to work with more people. But at this point, I’m at the point where I need to say no, unless I make changes in my business. 

In the past, I was scared to make an investment into my team. I was afraid that I wouldn’t have the client income to pay their invoices. But in all actuality, I was holding myself back from getting that income because I was taking time doing the work, rather than getting out there and connecting with prospective clients. While I would prefer to be the one that’s having strategy calls, there are so many skilled marketing experts out there who could be assisting me even with that. And we’re not even getting into the implementation yet. I don’t need to be doing the implementation. This is one of those things that I could be handing off to a skilled team member. 

If you look at your own business, are you doing the same? Are you trying to keep control on everything by doing it yourself? Well, I have to tell you, trying to keep control like that is actually making you lose control. Let me give you one important example, what would happen if today or tomorrow you got sick and had to be out of work for a week, if not even longer. Who would do the work that your clients had contracted with you for? Would you have a team member who could pick up the pieces, keep on rolling and make the clients happy? Or would everything come to a standstill? Standstills are not good. When life gets busy, we need to know that our business is going to keep on going even when we’re not there.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve had a lot of things going on around my house. We’ve had end of year school trips, we’ve had doctor’s appointments, we’ve had sporting events. And when I take myself out of the business, the work that I’ve been working on has stopped and it can’t be this way any further. Don’t allow yourself to be the bottleneck in your business. Hire slow, fire fast, and build the team that can best support you. 

Today, I challenge you to take inventory of everything that you do within your business, and start figuring out what you could be delegating to other team members if you just had the proper systems in place. Amazingly, and I don’t mean to toot my own horn, I’m great at helping clients figure this out for themselves. But as the expression goes, the cobbler’s kids shoes are the ones that are usually broken. I personally need to do this inventory in my own business, and I want you to do it along with me. 

So take that time today or in the next week, take inventory on what you’re doing and figure out what you could begin to outsource. Build the support that you need to build your business. 

Now, with all this said, go forth and make it a positive and productive day.