What is your most important role?

Business owners wear many hats.  We’re often the visionary, financial wizard, chief marketer, HR manager, IT person and producer of goods and services.  Early in the life of the business, we often have little choice about handling all of these functions.  But at some point in the life of the business, it makes sense to determine our most important role and focus our efforts and attention.

Figuring out how to do that can be a challenge.  Here are a few ways to approach it.

1.  What do you enjoy?  We tend to enjoy things we’re good at, and we tend to be good at things we enjoy.  (Go figure!)  If you enjoy marketing and hate finance, you’re going to choose to do more marketing than budgeting.  That doesn’t make budgeting any less important–it just gets less attention.  Know what you enjoy and think about whether or not it makes sense for you to focus your attention there.

2.  What can someone else do just as well or better than you?  Business owners can be a little controlling.  Sometimes its hard for us to believe that anyone can do things as well or better than we can, but they can, and we should take advantage of that.  Maybe the actual consulting you do is difficult to teach someone else to do, or you have particular expertise and experience that you can’t duplicate easily.  Fine, then think about those things that you can teach:  billing and financial record keeping, standard marketing activities, clerical tasks, and so on.  If someone else can learn how to do it, let them.  That will free you up for the things no one else can do as well as you.

3.  Where do you add the most value?  We each get 24 hours a day — that’s it.  If you want to maximize the value of your business, you have to spend your time on those areas where you add the most value.  If that’s selling, focus there.  If its delivering services, focus there.  Time is a perishable resource.  Every minute you spend doing something that doesn’t add significant value is a minute lost.

If you’re a small company or a one-person company, you may be thinking, “sure, I’d like to hand off some things, but who can I hand them off to?”  There are lots of options today.  Many small companies have sprung up to handle the tasks you shouldn’t.  Companies like Mattson Business Services can handle many of your administrative tasks and keep you organized.  Companies like Web Business Freedom can help manage your social media challenges.  Daniel Ratliff & Company can help with your accounting challenges.  And Altman Initiative Group can help with many of your HR challenges.

Take a little time to think about your most important role.  Your business’s future may depend on it.