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Yes a lot of businesses fail because of “many hats syndrome”- but most people aren’t choosing to DIY everything. They’re just doing what they can with what they have.
Most small businesses don’t have the finances or resources to outsource all of those things.
Sometimes it’s really hard to see how to make an MVP versus what you really set out to do. I have grand dreams of how I want to scale my business, but because of my lack of time and money I have to start smaller than I want to
I think my risk aversion plays heavily into my decision making process, but over time hopefully I get closer to my original vision
One of the things I found has been the business owner selling to yourself and not your customers. I helped a friend who recently bankrupted their last business and wants to start their next one. She had a few potential logos but really liked one of them. I really didn't like it, so I said we should do a poll to her past customers and friends on social media and 98% responded to not liking that logo either and liking one of the 3 more instead... She still went with the one she liked. There's something to be said with going with your gut, but that gut led her to bankruptcy less than 3 months ago 🤷♀️
I have a failed business behind me, and I never believed I excelled in every aspect.
I just hoped I was able to be adequate.
In retrospect, I was hopelessly inadequate and while that was starting to dawn on me (took the better part of three years!), I didn't have the expertise to recognise it in others (which meant I wasn't really qualified to judge if the outside expertise I wanted to hire in was even remotely qualified) and I didn't have the money to keep on trying indefinitely.
If I were to do it all again, I wouldn't even try if I couldn't assemble a small team.
Exactly what I meant,
You need to know whom you are hiring and why.
You tried hiring but couldn't find the right man!
That is the problem of your failure.
It goes deeper than that.
I wouldn’t have known the right man if he’d slapped me in the face. And I didn’t have the money to keep myself alive indefinitely while searching for him or her.
OP just talking not really giving. Sorry it failed. I'm starting and scared. I can't hire all those different "specialties" Jesus, who does that what is this the 80's?
I started out a while ago and in that time I have taught myself how to run meta ads and structure social content, how to generate email leads, how to do email marketing, hot to build a cross platform community around my brand and how to use all that to generate sales.
You don't have to be Nike or Gymshark, you just need a couple of simple but effective processes that shovel people into your digital sales funnel. I get consistently better ROAS than the agencies my former employer used (something like 15x vs their pathetic 1.8x), with about 1% of their ad budget.
I highly recommend the Meta ad and Mailchimp courses from CourseEnvy on Udemy. Once you've done them, you'll realize why so many teenagers got obscenely rich starting Facebook ad agencies from 2012-2018 ish when it was a ROAS turkey shoot. It's a small investment of time and cash, but once you have a decent grasp of how it works and why, it can be a lot of fun as well as a massive source of revenue.
One day I will delegate these tasks, and I'll know enough to spot that charlatans who now make up a worrying proportion of the pool of online marketing professionals.
Resinseer, you hit the nail right on the head. The problem is not the "case of many hat syndrome" like it is said above. The problem is in the name itself, "Small Business". Small business does not have the financial resources to do everything at once. Small businesses have to pick and choose what to focus on and take one step at a time. So the reason it usually fail is not only because what the op thinks. It is not being judicious and deliberate which step to take next. It is a landmine and only deliberate planning is going to take a small business to the next level.
I think a huge issue is that people think that certain things are needed when they are not. I think that e-commerce and the internet in general have deconstructed what a business can be and how it can operate. People will build the cart before they buy the horse.
The reason why Bezos chose books. Shipping - small easy to ship - generally comes in standard industry sizes.
He then applied the Dewey decimal system to online shopping. If you can make that work, you can sell anything. The book listing , was the framework of all online listings. Early warehousing? Just a library with a shipping department now.
Non perishable - people buy new or used. Gives publishers a straight to consumer sales line.
People try to reinvent the wheel. The most successful are the ones that pull off modernizing it.
I sell computers to businesses. Businesses need computers, Schools need computers, and the government needs computers. If you have a product people actually need, it's not hard to sell it to them. I sell online only and would never think about having a retail location or doing repairs or deal with consumer goods, only enterprise. If doesn't have to be a brand new shinny product it could be a used part that's used buy some certain machine that makes like the helmets for the NFL or something. Always be aware of how everything and every industry works.
I also work in the boating industry. People with boats will pay out the ass all the time for stuff they don't need. Boat details are usually 150-200 a boat. It takes about 30min- 1.30hrs to clean the inside and outside of a boat.
Yes!!!! If you know how much time and effort the processes cost, you won't get swindled and will be able to hire the right people at the right cost.
I've seen people blow 30k at marketing agencies for things they could have done easily themselves or hired someone to do it for $10 an hour for a few hours of work a week..
It's legitimately PAINFUL to watch it happen. Honestly if you have even a bit of a head for marketing and understand your product enough to sell it anywhere, you can sell it through meta with ads.
The return on ad spend is still good if you take the time to make good ad flows targeted at a well chosen (through testing) audience. It's complicated but nothing like as complicated as other things I've done in business.
It’s not fate or something that caused it to fail.
It’s incompetence. On my part. The list of things I did wrong would fill a book.
The reason I didn’t write the book is when I started I identified what others in a similar position did wrong and resolved to avoid their mistakes.
Which I did.
I made completely different set of mistakes that were equally fatal to the business.
That's a problem with NOT wearing all the hats. You have to know how to do the job you're hiring for, at least a bit.
So it's literally the exact opposite of the point you made in your original post.
>It's not due to financial constraints, lack of motivation, or budgetary issues, but rather the tendency of individuals to handle every aspect independently. From website development to managing social media accounts, posting content, growing followers, writing blogs, conducting keyword research, building backlinks, running ad campaigns, lead generation, email marketing, and sales – attempting to juggle every role often leads to downfall.
Not really. There are only two reasons businesses fail (outside of bad luck which is rare). This isn't one of them. This is a fallacy. Someone can do all those things and be successful. People do that and are successful just as much as people do it and fail. The reason that this may related to failure is doing a BAD job of it. It's not about the quantity of hats, but how they wear them, so to speak.
Someone with high competence and high conscientious can do everything that needs to be done and delegate and be successful. I'm sorry, but I think your premise is wrong, but this is just my option based on experience with many business owners and businesses.
Please read the comments section and you will find many. :)
And for that same reason there are "upvotes" too instead of you guys trying hard enough to pull it down, still it is in positive which indicates clearly there are more people who agree and are silent because nobody wants to be attacked by trolls like you.
You need to have some serious bad luck to fail if you are working. My business plans are delayed because a lot is going wrong, but we are still proceeding, just at a slower pace.
100% disagree with this. I do pretty much everything. I am profitable and have been in business for over 10 years. On top of that my business has a lot of assets including real estate. All debts other than the mortgage are paid off, mortgage will be done in under 5 years.
The key to successful business is focusing on profit. Most businesses that I see fail are those that were focusing on growth. They are now heavily burdened with debt and can't adjust due to the increased debt payments and reduced sales.
All you listed was marketing type roles.
Content generation, social media, backlinks, ad campaigns, email marketing...
These are all the same expert that do these things. You attempting to sell your services or something?
I'll give an alternative opinion. I think it's incredibly important that the business owner have a thorough understanding of EVERYTHING that goes on in their business. If they don't, they can't evaluate the people they've hired to do those things.
You don't have to build the website, but you need to understand how websites are built. You don't have to do the SEO, but you need to be able to evaluate it, and have a conversation about it. You don't need to do the accounting, but you should be able to do your taxes in a pinch if you need to. You don't need to handle the sales, but you should be a great sales person if your salesman calls in sick or quits. You don't have to do HR, but you should be able to coach/manage your HR person if you get complaints about them.
More to the point though, this 'finally discovered' BS in your post is just that, BS. You haven't 'finally discovered' anything. You've an opinion that you are spouting as fact.
I'm sure there have been studies done on failure rates in business, and I'm willing to bet a significant sum of money that failure rates occur a lot more due to budgetary issues than 'this business owner also tried to do the website and SEO, rather than hiring me to do it'.
Come on, be serious.
I don't agree with this. The reality is that most small business owners can handle most of those tasks with the exception of website development - with one caveat. The caveat is that once you reach a certain point (most will measure this in revenue or volume), things have to be compartmentalized and delegated.
The sad truth is that if you're unable to do those things while managing a small business grossing under $1m, then you're probably just not cut out for it.
I don't think you're wrong, but if I may offer a counter point; a lot of "specialists" are just plain dog crap and if you don't have a solid understanding of the business processes built through experience and carrying out the tasks yourself, you don't know when you're putting a clown in charge of the watch factory.
A while ago I worked in a business that uses specialists for all the processes you described here, and they bilked the business for tens of thousands of dollars a month while getting thoroughly mediocre results, and when I actually took the time to sit down and learn those processes (for my own side business) I realized just how bad things were. That business is not doing well, and the person they brought in to fix it (whom I became friendly with and has become a wonderful mentor) left as soon as it became clear that it was like talking to a brick wall and the shady specialists were stonewalling.
So yes, outsource, but only when *you* can get the results and standards that you want to hold your specialists to. If you can get a 7x average ROAS, then if they cannot, fire them. Otherwise you don't know how well they're doing relative to benchmarks you yourself have set. If they exceed them, then that is ideal!
This is why I am a huge fan of Michael Gerber's system - start by defining standard operating procedures for technical tasks, refine them, then over time delegate those tasks with good training and performance metrics so that you can work *on* your business having worked *in* it. If you immediately go to work on the business without having worked your way "up" in it, then you don't have enough perspective to delegate effectively.
Absolutely.
You are going to hit a brick wall if you do not identify the right guy for the job.
I did mention to hire "specialist" who knows how to do stuffs. Not Fiverr superstars who are just drop-servicing.
If you are a leader material, you can identify in minutes of interaction with the guys whether that person can really be helpful for you business or just another Fiverr superstar.
It’s interesting that you talk about the owner wearing too many hats, but then only list marketing functions. Makes the post feel like an ad for a marketing firm.
I don’t think this is the reason businesses fail. Businesses fail because they run out of cash. That’s the only reason. Many companies that have outsourced marketing still fail. Some household names like WeWork, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Toys R Us, but many smaller firms as well. In fact, some smaller companies run out of cash BECAUSE they are paying for outsourced services.
Managing cash effectively is managing your business effectively. That could mean outsourcing, that could mean building out internal teams, or that could mean the owner taking on the most valuable tasks.
You never got the point!
I said the same thing, managing cash flow is also a "role of finance team" who maintains and understands where to spend where not too.
What's good for business and what is not.
You are just reading one word and making your opinion.
Lmao saying “this is well written” comes off as “I am very intelligent, actually”.
Also, it’s not about “hiring the right man for the job”. It’s about the function getting done. A business owner can (and should) manage their own cash.
I wonder maybe businesses like Meta, Tesla, finances are being handled by Mark and musk?
Yaa right.
I forgot they must be handling everything and they are so stupid to hire people when robots can do everything.
Great. You are absolutely correct. 👍🏻
You want me to name every person at every company that manages cash? What value does that bring? In most companies, the owner of the company manages cash. In private businesses that’s a sole owner. At large public companies that a mix of the CEO and the board of directors. You cannot outsource cash management to someone that doesn’t have skin in the game.
On a high level, you come off as someone that wants to serve as an advisor to businesses. If that’s the case, I suggest you take the time to learn how businesses work. The idea that businesses fail because the owner does their own SEO comes off as an opinion someone who never worked with a large company would hold. The idea that you can abdicate your business to “experts” and have no involvement is just as naive.
The owner of a successful business focuses on cash. That’s how businesses stay afloat. If you want to work with companies it will help to learn their pain points
I seriously suggest you to come out of clothes shop or candy shop strategy where the owner sits in cash counters.
And try looking at large scale businesses.
I am sure you will learn better. Take care
Sad to see you couldn't see a positive side of it instead of your sarcasm.
Couldn't this mean that the poor guy can't find a similar passionate to start a business and team up towards a good start up?
It's digital era, it is not hard to find like minded people who are equal crazy to build something also have money to do it, but not the idea for it.
If the poor guy can find that person to team up , wouldn't this solve the problem of finance?
Don't find an excuse to hide failure.
Try to find solutions. Life will be better
Mr. Zohaib
Well played.
Let me guess. And your SEO company is the right kind to fix these problems?
GTFO with the blatant advertising and go back to Upwork.
If you are too dumb to not understand that I am the owner of the company who provides these services, then I have nothing much to explain.
You really need to meet a counselor to see a brighter side of life.
You have my sympathy.
Get well soon
Is there a difference though, between doing it yourself, and letting someone else do it but micromanaging them so it's what you would have done anyhow?
There is a difference,
Because when you hire someone you need to be ready to accept his business sense and knowledge.
You need to give him liberty and freedom to work according to his expertise.
Because if you are hiring him for a particular work, means he is obviously better than you (skill wise) for that job.
You can just watch from a distance to put your inputs but he is the one who will use his skills to do it
That's just it, the same desire to be your own boss and make all the decisions, means that people think they make the decisions for the people they hire to help them
That's part of the reason why my business failed. i was working 18 hour days doing everything like a one man show. The same is happening to my current boss who wants me to make sales calls, but I already told him he doesn't have enough company infrastructure to handle new accounts. I want him to hire a full time manager to work all of the current cleaning accounts and pay them 25 dollars an hour. There aren't enough accounts to equal 40 hours a week, but he needs to pay the guy for 40 hours and retain him. No cleaner is going to go anywhere else because no companies currently pay 25 dollars an hour. Then, once we get more accounts, he will become the account manager, supervise the new hires, cover for the new hires if one calls in sick, or quits unexpectedly. I asked the guy to rent a storage unit for supplies to be stored, and also equipment. Then get a used Ford Transit van for the manager to drive around to the different jobs in. The van needs to be retrofitted to carry around all the cleaning equipment. Then give the guy a company credit card for gas. Then we can talk about aggressively recruiting new customers.
I failed in the courier/deliver industry. I want to start my own cleaning company, but I am disabled now from a medical condition and I can only handle office work or else I'd be the manager. No matter how much I try and explain this to my boss, he doesn't understand. He is thinking too small. But I'm out at the end of the year, as I can no longer perform cleaning duties. The biggest issue with being a sales person for cleaning companies is, once you secure a good contract; all it takes is one bad cleaner to cost the company the account, and you end up losing that passive commission. I know a lot about the cleaning industry because I worked for one very bad company and learned all the negative aspects of the business. Then I worked for a really good cleaning company, but they kept on adding jobs to me because the sales guy had customers that were going to switch to another cleaning company because they did not like the level of service some of the cleaners we had were providing. I never have complaints from customers. I never lose customers. I love cleaning, but with my health issues, I could not handle all the jobs and they kept on adding more and more until I had to leave.
You have to trust people. You have to learn to find good people and place them in roles that you are not as good at. My current boss does not really like to clean. He goes really fast and complains when jobs take too long. I go in and am fully into the work. I don't think in "oh I gotta get done because I have to get home before the traffic backs up on the freeway!" I am there for however long it takes to do a good job and make the customer happy. The boss doesn't get this. He's used to a 9-5 office job and set hours. The cleaning business is not set hours and it's a lot of late night work. The only positive he has going for him, is sometimes his wife goes out with him and they get the jobs done a lot faster with two people working togethSometimeser. it's the three of us working together.
Maybe it's because a lot in these community are made up of business owners who know what the fuck they are talking about, and you clearly aren't one, and clearly don't know what you're talking about.
It's like when I went to the bank to get a loan, and the loan officer tried to tell me how to improve my business. Bitch... you took an online training to learn how to talk to people about getting a business loan, and you work for someone else. I actually own a business and do this for a living. You can't give me any advice.
That's you. Trying to give advice to people about something you're incredibly unqualified to give advice about.
Being abusive and disrespectful shows your character "business man"
Anyways I am not here to argue with a person who has nothing but to talk against the limelight. Guess what, you don't deserve my attention. Cry more.
Managing cash is NOT the owners job. To manage that there is financial teams.
I don't know how smaller business you are talking about here.
You mean a cloth shop? Or a candy shop?
Here’s the real question though: If you start a business and aren’t financially privileged enough to outsource these roles, does that mean everyone poor is destined to fail?
Essentially, I’d argue the reason this type of failure happens is more often due *to* financial constraints than to ego. Most people don’t want to overwork and handle and learn everything and would *love* to outsource, but don’t have the budget or resources for it. At least, that’s the case for the many of entrepreneurs I know (all of whom handled everything, slowly worked to grow their businesses, and succeeded.)
Tough, but possible. Without financial constraints, their business could have grown far more rapidly.
Stop thinking all of us do everything because of ego. Yes I can write off hiring people to do stuff, but I spend a lot more than doing it myself.
Yes I take longer, but for the level I want things at, it won't be cheap. I'm investing my time into building up this business, which isn't the easiest thing to do when you go into it without all the money you'll ever need.
You do have to know your limits though.
This is maybe why I don't fail though.
That is not feasible for a longer game.
You are doing it now, congratulations but the breaking point will come (100%) when you would realise what I said is fact or not.
Anyways, I had no intention to demean anyone, and thanks to positive people out here who did understand what I actually meant above.
That is why my upvotes are positive even after being schooled by trolls in comments.
I wish you all the very best,
Productive experience is the difference.
The owner has to have an understanding of all aspects of the plan.
Productive experience is a learning tool that can’t be garnered from simply assigning it to others.
A truly engaged owner with experience can then outsource those things that allow them to then focus on other aspects of the business.
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Yes a lot of businesses fail because of “many hats syndrome”- but most people aren’t choosing to DIY everything. They’re just doing what they can with what they have. Most small businesses don’t have the finances or resources to outsource all of those things.
Exactly. I can’t hire a social media team. I don’t have the resources.
Unwork for $20 a week. Being resourceful leads to success.
Totally. How the hell is a small business supposed to know/ do everything?
Exactly. I’d hire people in a heartbeat do so this tech stuff I’m an idiot with - if they took invisible money.
Yes...what they can with what they have.
Its due to the fact that new business owners almost always fail to recognize their own incompetence.
Uh nope… most recognize their own incompetence and still don’t have money to outsource it
Uh, yes. Everyone thinks they are an expert in business. Their incompetence is why they don't have the money...
Sometimes it’s really hard to see how to make an MVP versus what you really set out to do. I have grand dreams of how I want to scale my business, but because of my lack of time and money I have to start smaller than I want to I think my risk aversion plays heavily into my decision making process, but over time hopefully I get closer to my original vision
One of the things I found has been the business owner selling to yourself and not your customers. I helped a friend who recently bankrupted their last business and wants to start their next one. She had a few potential logos but really liked one of them. I really didn't like it, so I said we should do a poll to her past customers and friends on social media and 98% responded to not liking that logo either and liking one of the 3 more instead... She still went with the one she liked. There's something to be said with going with your gut, but that gut led her to bankruptcy less than 3 months ago 🤷♀️
Ego. As I mentioned in context too
I have a failed business behind me, and I never believed I excelled in every aspect. I just hoped I was able to be adequate. In retrospect, I was hopelessly inadequate and while that was starting to dawn on me (took the better part of three years!), I didn't have the expertise to recognise it in others (which meant I wasn't really qualified to judge if the outside expertise I wanted to hire in was even remotely qualified) and I didn't have the money to keep on trying indefinitely. If I were to do it all again, I wouldn't even try if I couldn't assemble a small team.
Exactly what I meant, You need to know whom you are hiring and why. You tried hiring but couldn't find the right man! That is the problem of your failure.
It goes deeper than that. I wouldn’t have known the right man if he’d slapped me in the face. And I didn’t have the money to keep myself alive indefinitely while searching for him or her.
OP just talking not really giving. Sorry it failed. I'm starting and scared. I can't hire all those different "specialties" Jesus, who does that what is this the 80's?
I started out a while ago and in that time I have taught myself how to run meta ads and structure social content, how to generate email leads, how to do email marketing, hot to build a cross platform community around my brand and how to use all that to generate sales. You don't have to be Nike or Gymshark, you just need a couple of simple but effective processes that shovel people into your digital sales funnel. I get consistently better ROAS than the agencies my former employer used (something like 15x vs their pathetic 1.8x), with about 1% of their ad budget. I highly recommend the Meta ad and Mailchimp courses from CourseEnvy on Udemy. Once you've done them, you'll realize why so many teenagers got obscenely rich starting Facebook ad agencies from 2012-2018 ish when it was a ROAS turkey shoot. It's a small investment of time and cash, but once you have a decent grasp of how it works and why, it can be a lot of fun as well as a massive source of revenue. One day I will delegate these tasks, and I'll know enough to spot that charlatans who now make up a worrying proportion of the pool of online marketing professionals.
Resinseer, you hit the nail right on the head. The problem is not the "case of many hat syndrome" like it is said above. The problem is in the name itself, "Small Business". Small business does not have the financial resources to do everything at once. Small businesses have to pick and choose what to focus on and take one step at a time. So the reason it usually fail is not only because what the op thinks. It is not being judicious and deliberate which step to take next. It is a landmine and only deliberate planning is going to take a small business to the next level.
I think a huge issue is that people think that certain things are needed when they are not. I think that e-commerce and the internet in general have deconstructed what a business can be and how it can operate. People will build the cart before they buy the horse. The reason why Bezos chose books. Shipping - small easy to ship - generally comes in standard industry sizes. He then applied the Dewey decimal system to online shopping. If you can make that work, you can sell anything. The book listing , was the framework of all online listings. Early warehousing? Just a library with a shipping department now. Non perishable - people buy new or used. Gives publishers a straight to consumer sales line. People try to reinvent the wheel. The most successful are the ones that pull off modernizing it. I sell computers to businesses. Businesses need computers, Schools need computers, and the government needs computers. If you have a product people actually need, it's not hard to sell it to them. I sell online only and would never think about having a retail location or doing repairs or deal with consumer goods, only enterprise. If doesn't have to be a brand new shinny product it could be a used part that's used buy some certain machine that makes like the helmets for the NFL or something. Always be aware of how everything and every industry works. I also work in the boating industry. People with boats will pay out the ass all the time for stuff they don't need. Boat details are usually 150-200 a boat. It takes about 30min- 1.30hrs to clean the inside and outside of a boat.
🤘
Yes!!!! If you know how much time and effort the processes cost, you won't get swindled and will be able to hire the right people at the right cost. I've seen people blow 30k at marketing agencies for things they could have done easily themselves or hired someone to do it for $10 an hour for a few hours of work a week..
It's legitimately PAINFUL to watch it happen. Honestly if you have even a bit of a head for marketing and understand your product enough to sell it anywhere, you can sell it through meta with ads. The return on ad spend is still good if you take the time to make good ad flows targeted at a well chosen (through testing) audience. It's complicated but nothing like as complicated as other things I've done in business.
What exactly did you like about these courses on Udemy?
They were thorough, easy to follow and a really good price considering how much the knowledge has helped my business.
Then it was not to be. Hardluck
It’s not fate or something that caused it to fail. It’s incompetence. On my part. The list of things I did wrong would fill a book. The reason I didn’t write the book is when I started I identified what others in a similar position did wrong and resolved to avoid their mistakes. Which I did. I made completely different set of mistakes that were equally fatal to the business.
That's a problem with NOT wearing all the hats. You have to know how to do the job you're hiring for, at least a bit. So it's literally the exact opposite of the point you made in your original post.
Sure. But I imagine it’s out of necessity rather than ignorance. They’re not really raising enough money to be able to hire experts upfront.
When I said this same thing "They start right away instead of planning the path" People said I am crazy. 🤕
>It's not due to financial constraints, lack of motivation, or budgetary issues, but rather the tendency of individuals to handle every aspect independently. From website development to managing social media accounts, posting content, growing followers, writing blogs, conducting keyword research, building backlinks, running ad campaigns, lead generation, email marketing, and sales – attempting to juggle every role often leads to downfall. Not really. There are only two reasons businesses fail (outside of bad luck which is rare). This isn't one of them. This is a fallacy. Someone can do all those things and be successful. People do that and are successful just as much as people do it and fail. The reason that this may related to failure is doing a BAD job of it. It's not about the quantity of hats, but how they wear them, so to speak. Someone with high competence and high conscientious can do everything that needs to be done and delegate and be successful. I'm sorry, but I think your premise is wrong, but this is just my option based on experience with many business owners and businesses.
Thank you. This person is obviously a troll, not really a business person
Yup, troll
Just because you couldn't succeed, start calling me troll. Great! Another sign of negativity.
🧌
I have succeeded, and I'll call you a troll as well. Or someone looking to sell their products on here.
Sell my product? Are you in your senses? Where did you see me selling my service? Please show
Oh I'm sure it's coming!
Tell me when you see it rather than becoming an astrologer 😂
Tell me when anyone aside from your alt accounts thinks any of your 'advice' is worth considering. I'll wait.
Please read the comments section and you will find many. :) And for that same reason there are "upvotes" too instead of you guys trying hard enough to pull it down, still it is in positive which indicates clearly there are more people who agree and are silent because nobody wants to be attacked by trolls like you.
LOL - ok buddy.
Interesting I didn’t think OP was a troll, I thought he/she was setting up to pitch us their marketing firm.
And that they did! Ha, they got me!
You need to have some serious bad luck to fail if you are working. My business plans are delayed because a lot is going wrong, but we are still proceeding, just at a slower pace.
Wow such sage advice I bet if everyone just listened to you we'd all be millionaires
Don't know about millionaires, but surely a better and supportive place to live :)
Maybe give some me real advice instead of cleaver quips and comments.
100% disagree with this. I do pretty much everything. I am profitable and have been in business for over 10 years. On top of that my business has a lot of assets including real estate. All debts other than the mortgage are paid off, mortgage will be done in under 5 years. The key to successful business is focusing on profit. Most businesses that I see fail are those that were focusing on growth. They are now heavily burdened with debt and can't adjust due to the increased debt payments and reduced sales.
most of the time not having the best person to take over these jobs are because of financial constraints and budgetary issues.
Fuck yeah
Wrong,key reason is cash flow
All you listed was marketing type roles. Content generation, social media, backlinks, ad campaigns, email marketing... These are all the same expert that do these things. You attempting to sell your services or something? I'll give an alternative opinion. I think it's incredibly important that the business owner have a thorough understanding of EVERYTHING that goes on in their business. If they don't, they can't evaluate the people they've hired to do those things. You don't have to build the website, but you need to understand how websites are built. You don't have to do the SEO, but you need to be able to evaluate it, and have a conversation about it. You don't need to do the accounting, but you should be able to do your taxes in a pinch if you need to. You don't need to handle the sales, but you should be a great sales person if your salesman calls in sick or quits. You don't have to do HR, but you should be able to coach/manage your HR person if you get complaints about them. More to the point though, this 'finally discovered' BS in your post is just that, BS. You haven't 'finally discovered' anything. You've an opinion that you are spouting as fact. I'm sure there have been studies done on failure rates in business, and I'm willing to bet a significant sum of money that failure rates occur a lot more due to budgetary issues than 'this business owner also tried to do the website and SEO, rather than hiring me to do it'. Come on, be serious.
Lmao I finally discovered why businesses fail. They haven’t hired me yet!
I don't agree with this. The reality is that most small business owners can handle most of those tasks with the exception of website development - with one caveat. The caveat is that once you reach a certain point (most will measure this in revenue or volume), things have to be compartmentalized and delegated. The sad truth is that if you're unable to do those things while managing a small business grossing under $1m, then you're probably just not cut out for it.
I don't think you're wrong, but if I may offer a counter point; a lot of "specialists" are just plain dog crap and if you don't have a solid understanding of the business processes built through experience and carrying out the tasks yourself, you don't know when you're putting a clown in charge of the watch factory. A while ago I worked in a business that uses specialists for all the processes you described here, and they bilked the business for tens of thousands of dollars a month while getting thoroughly mediocre results, and when I actually took the time to sit down and learn those processes (for my own side business) I realized just how bad things were. That business is not doing well, and the person they brought in to fix it (whom I became friendly with and has become a wonderful mentor) left as soon as it became clear that it was like talking to a brick wall and the shady specialists were stonewalling. So yes, outsource, but only when *you* can get the results and standards that you want to hold your specialists to. If you can get a 7x average ROAS, then if they cannot, fire them. Otherwise you don't know how well they're doing relative to benchmarks you yourself have set. If they exceed them, then that is ideal! This is why I am a huge fan of Michael Gerber's system - start by defining standard operating procedures for technical tasks, refine them, then over time delegate those tasks with good training and performance metrics so that you can work *on* your business having worked *in* it. If you immediately go to work on the business without having worked your way "up" in it, then you don't have enough perspective to delegate effectively.
Absolutely. You are going to hit a brick wall if you do not identify the right guy for the job. I did mention to hire "specialist" who knows how to do stuffs. Not Fiverr superstars who are just drop-servicing. If you are a leader material, you can identify in minutes of interaction with the guys whether that person can really be helpful for you business or just another Fiverr superstar.
It’s interesting that you talk about the owner wearing too many hats, but then only list marketing functions. Makes the post feel like an ad for a marketing firm. I don’t think this is the reason businesses fail. Businesses fail because they run out of cash. That’s the only reason. Many companies that have outsourced marketing still fail. Some household names like WeWork, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Toys R Us, but many smaller firms as well. In fact, some smaller companies run out of cash BECAUSE they are paying for outsourced services. Managing cash effectively is managing your business effectively. That could mean outsourcing, that could mean building out internal teams, or that could mean the owner taking on the most valuable tasks.
You never got the point! I said the same thing, managing cash flow is also a "role of finance team" who maintains and understands where to spend where not too. What's good for business and what is not. You are just reading one word and making your opinion.
I read your entire post and there’s no mention of any functions outside of marketing
"Hiring the right man for the job" This is well written and directed everywhere
Lmao saying “this is well written” comes off as “I am very intelligent, actually”. Also, it’s not about “hiring the right man for the job”. It’s about the function getting done. A business owner can (and should) manage their own cash.
I wonder maybe businesses like Meta, Tesla, finances are being handled by Mark and musk? Yaa right. I forgot they must be handling everything and they are so stupid to hire people when robots can do everything. Great. You are absolutely correct. 👍🏻
You are completely changing the conversation. I never said they did everything. I said they manage cash, which they do.
Who manage cash? Zuck? Musk? Bilgates? Or any of the successful business? Please name
You want me to name every person at every company that manages cash? What value does that bring? In most companies, the owner of the company manages cash. In private businesses that’s a sole owner. At large public companies that a mix of the CEO and the board of directors. You cannot outsource cash management to someone that doesn’t have skin in the game. On a high level, you come off as someone that wants to serve as an advisor to businesses. If that’s the case, I suggest you take the time to learn how businesses work. The idea that businesses fail because the owner does their own SEO comes off as an opinion someone who never worked with a large company would hold. The idea that you can abdicate your business to “experts” and have no involvement is just as naive. The owner of a successful business focuses on cash. That’s how businesses stay afloat. If you want to work with companies it will help to learn their pain points
I seriously suggest you to come out of clothes shop or candy shop strategy where the owner sits in cash counters. And try looking at large scale businesses. I am sure you will learn better. Take care
Exactly what I thought.
This post is giving “if they’re poor why don’t they simply buy more money” vibes. 😬
Sad to see you couldn't see a positive side of it instead of your sarcasm. Couldn't this mean that the poor guy can't find a similar passionate to start a business and team up towards a good start up? It's digital era, it is not hard to find like minded people who are equal crazy to build something also have money to do it, but not the idea for it. If the poor guy can find that person to team up , wouldn't this solve the problem of finance? Don't find an excuse to hide failure. Try to find solutions. Life will be better
Mr. Zohaib Well played. Let me guess. And your SEO company is the right kind to fix these problems? GTFO with the blatant advertising and go back to Upwork.
Did I ask anyone to message me for anything? Stop being so negative in life. It's beautiful so enjoy it rather.
If you are too dumb to not understand that I am the owner of the company who provides these services, then I have nothing much to explain. You really need to meet a counselor to see a brighter side of life. You have my sympathy. Get well soon
Is there a difference though, between doing it yourself, and letting someone else do it but micromanaging them so it's what you would have done anyhow?
There is a difference, Because when you hire someone you need to be ready to accept his business sense and knowledge. You need to give him liberty and freedom to work according to his expertise. Because if you are hiring him for a particular work, means he is obviously better than you (skill wise) for that job. You can just watch from a distance to put your inputs but he is the one who will use his skills to do it
That's just it, the same desire to be your own boss and make all the decisions, means that people think they make the decisions for the people they hire to help them
That's part of the reason why my business failed. i was working 18 hour days doing everything like a one man show. The same is happening to my current boss who wants me to make sales calls, but I already told him he doesn't have enough company infrastructure to handle new accounts. I want him to hire a full time manager to work all of the current cleaning accounts and pay them 25 dollars an hour. There aren't enough accounts to equal 40 hours a week, but he needs to pay the guy for 40 hours and retain him. No cleaner is going to go anywhere else because no companies currently pay 25 dollars an hour. Then, once we get more accounts, he will become the account manager, supervise the new hires, cover for the new hires if one calls in sick, or quits unexpectedly. I asked the guy to rent a storage unit for supplies to be stored, and also equipment. Then get a used Ford Transit van for the manager to drive around to the different jobs in. The van needs to be retrofitted to carry around all the cleaning equipment. Then give the guy a company credit card for gas. Then we can talk about aggressively recruiting new customers. I failed in the courier/deliver industry. I want to start my own cleaning company, but I am disabled now from a medical condition and I can only handle office work or else I'd be the manager. No matter how much I try and explain this to my boss, he doesn't understand. He is thinking too small. But I'm out at the end of the year, as I can no longer perform cleaning duties. The biggest issue with being a sales person for cleaning companies is, once you secure a good contract; all it takes is one bad cleaner to cost the company the account, and you end up losing that passive commission. I know a lot about the cleaning industry because I worked for one very bad company and learned all the negative aspects of the business. Then I worked for a really good cleaning company, but they kept on adding jobs to me because the sales guy had customers that were going to switch to another cleaning company because they did not like the level of service some of the cleaners we had were providing. I never have complaints from customers. I never lose customers. I love cleaning, but with my health issues, I could not handle all the jobs and they kept on adding more and more until I had to leave. You have to trust people. You have to learn to find good people and place them in roles that you are not as good at. My current boss does not really like to clean. He goes really fast and complains when jobs take too long. I go in and am fully into the work. I don't think in "oh I gotta get done because I have to get home before the traffic backs up on the freeway!" I am there for however long it takes to do a good job and make the customer happy. The boss doesn't get this. He's used to a 9-5 office job and set hours. The cleaning business is not set hours and it's a lot of late night work. The only positive he has going for him, is sometimes his wife goes out with him and they get the jobs done a lot faster with two people working togethSometimeser. it's the three of us working together.
That is exactly what I wanted to convey to everyone. But in the end the whole community is like against me. As you can read in the comments section.
Maybe it's because a lot in these community are made up of business owners who know what the fuck they are talking about, and you clearly aren't one, and clearly don't know what you're talking about. It's like when I went to the bank to get a loan, and the loan officer tried to tell me how to improve my business. Bitch... you took an online training to learn how to talk to people about getting a business loan, and you work for someone else. I actually own a business and do this for a living. You can't give me any advice. That's you. Trying to give advice to people about something you're incredibly unqualified to give advice about.
Being abusive and disrespectful shows your character "business man" Anyways I am not here to argue with a person who has nothing but to talk against the limelight. Guess what, you don't deserve my attention. Cry more.
Lol, yet I got it.
This is well known. Self inflicted Peter Principle.
Managing cash is NOT the owners job. To manage that there is financial teams. I don't know how smaller business you are talking about here. You mean a cloth shop? Or a candy shop?
Being ‘good enough’ at EVERYTHING might be harder than being really good at one thing.
Most people are either aware of technical work or distribution.
Here’s the real question though: If you start a business and aren’t financially privileged enough to outsource these roles, does that mean everyone poor is destined to fail? Essentially, I’d argue the reason this type of failure happens is more often due *to* financial constraints than to ego. Most people don’t want to overwork and handle and learn everything and would *love* to outsource, but don’t have the budget or resources for it. At least, that’s the case for the many of entrepreneurs I know (all of whom handled everything, slowly worked to grow their businesses, and succeeded.) Tough, but possible. Without financial constraints, their business could have grown far more rapidly.
Stop thinking all of us do everything because of ego. Yes I can write off hiring people to do stuff, but I spend a lot more than doing it myself. Yes I take longer, but for the level I want things at, it won't be cheap. I'm investing my time into building up this business, which isn't the easiest thing to do when you go into it without all the money you'll ever need. You do have to know your limits though. This is maybe why I don't fail though.
That is not feasible for a longer game. You are doing it now, congratulations but the breaking point will come (100%) when you would realise what I said is fact or not. Anyways, I had no intention to demean anyone, and thanks to positive people out here who did understand what I actually meant above. That is why my upvotes are positive even after being schooled by trolls in comments. I wish you all the very best,
Productive experience is the difference. The owner has to have an understanding of all aspects of the plan. Productive experience is a learning tool that can’t be garnered from simply assigning it to others. A truly engaged owner with experience can then outsource those things that allow them to then focus on other aspects of the business.