An established international entrepreneur & expert marketer who has successfully built multimillion-dollar businesses. CEO of Mawer Capital.
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To work less and make more, you need to invest in your business. If you do this right, you can practically craft the life of your dreams. If you do this wrong, you’ll be spinning your wheels working 14-hour days, chasing clients and wondering how all this could happen to you.
See, I used to make one of the most common but poor investing decisions any entrepreneur could make: I would look for a “bargain” anytime I hired someone for a leadership position—someone I could get for the lowest cost that would give me “good” work.
Things would always start off great with them until the work inevitably piled up and I would need to step in to help. Pretty soon, I’d be back to working with my hands in every project and clocking in 12-to-14-hour days as if I’d never hired the person in the first place. Was it the employee’s fault for not solving the crisis on their own? Or was it my fault for hiring a B-level leader who couldn’t handle the task? Obviously, this was on me.
When I finally went against my instincts of looking for “bargain” leadership and invested good money into finding world-class leadership, my business changed forever. Suddenly, I could take on new projects. I had time to focus on high-value activities that grew the business. I could work on my business rather than in my business. And my business grew faster and faster year after year.
MORE FOR YOU
So, in this article, I’m going to attempt to change your mind before you make the same investing decision I used to make and, instead, convince you to invest in world-class leadership. And by the end of it, you’ll discover how you can finally do less and make more once and for all. Let’s get into it.
World-Class Leaders Handle Problems Without You
Have you ever had a day that was so busy, you didn’t have time to eat? Then, of course on that same day, you discovered that a long-time client is deciding to leave and go to a competitor, one of your employees is sick so they cannot handle customer service calls, your ads stopped working and are now burning a hole in your wallet, and your dog has an emergency and needs to go to the vet now!
Maybe those exact circumstances never happened to you but, if I had to guess, you’ve definitely experienced being overwhelmed by “life just happening” on an already busy day. Now, if you have proper leadership in place, all those problems that come up (minus the dog emergency) can be handled by someone else, and without you even knowing.
See, when a world-class leader faces a problem, they don’t need to come to you. They lead their team (and yes, it is their team) to solve any issue at hand. You don’t even need to know about it until they’ve solved it or they specifically asked you for your help.
This has saved days, weeks and probably even years’ worth of my life just from stress and anxiety alone. But just imagine how much more focused you’d be once you’re not constantly putting out fires.
World-Class Leadership Runs Your Company
Just like a car needs someone to press the gas pedal to go forward, a business needs someone to bring in the cash to go forward. As the entrepreneur and the head of the company, your job is to bring in the cash. But a car also needs oil, gas, antifreeze and to be well kept in order to run at peak performance. That’s your leaders’ job.
Keep the business running like a fine-tuned car, day in and day out. And if there’s ever a problem, they get it fixed immediately so all you have to do is decide how much gas you want to give it.
World-Class Leaders Will Replace You (In A Good Way)
Ultimately, if you want to do less and make more, you’re going to have to replace yourself. That means looking at everything on your calendar and figuring out how you’re going to delegate everything on there to someone else.
With world-class leaders, not only can you hand them your tasks, but they can find other people in the business who can perform those same tasks better than you. I know that might be hard to believe, but it’s true. With a cleared schedule, now you can focus your time on the highest-value activities, which will bring your business more cash.
Your Main Objective As A Business Owner
As the top leader and founder of your business, your No. 1 job is to make sure there is constantly more business coming through your doors. That’s it. Because no one will ever be as enthusiastic about your business as you (not even the greatest leader on the planet). So use your enthusiasm to bring in new customers, lock in lifetime customers, and provide your business with the cash it needs to grow.
Don’t forget, there’s still a whole business to run. But none of that is your job. Instead, hire the best top leaders you can find so they can take everything off your plate and allow you to focus on your one job—making more money in less time.
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Author: Rudy Mawer, Forbes Councils Member
