I met a fellow entrepreneur at a business conference and over dinner he told me he couldn’t understand why his company’s growth taped off.
He wasn’t lazy or sitting around waiting for something to happen.
He was busy all day.
The more we talked, though, the clearer it became that being busy was part of the problem.
He answered routine emails, scheduled meetings, followed up on invoices, and took care of whatever else landed in front of him.
All of it needed to be done, and because he was capable of doing it, he did it.
At one point, I asked him, “Who’s your assistant?”
He laughed and said, “I don’t have one.”
“I think you do,” I told him.
He looked confused.
“You.”
He smiled because he knew exactly what I meant.
Without realizing it, he had become his own assistant.
I think this happens to more business owners than anyone wants to admit.
It usually begins when the company is small and the owner does everything.
You answer the phone, send the invoices, solve the problems, and keep the whole thing moving because there isn’t anyone else.
Those jobs are necessary in the early days, we all do them, but it becomes dangerous when the business grows and you don’t evolve.
The little jobs never disappear on their own. They keep coming, and because you already know how to do them, it seems easier to handle them yourself than to teach someone else.
Before long, your days are filled with work, but not much of that work grows the business.
I’m guilty of this too. I think we all are to some degree.
Look at it this way.
Let’s say your business does a million dollars a year which is about $500/hr. for your time.
Now think about what you did yesterday.
How much of your time was spent doing $25/hr. work?
Maybe it was scheduling meetings, organizing files, booking travel, or opening the bills.
None of that work is beneath you and none of it is unimportant.
But you still have to ask yourself a serious question.
“Why would someone who earns $500 an hour spend time on $25-an-hour work?”
You didn’t save anything by doing the work yourself.
The real cost to your business is the higher-value work you didn’t do.
You didn’t think about the new opportunity that could grow the business.
You didn’t spend time with the employee who could become a future leader.
You didn’t improve your offer, build an important relationship, find a better way to serve customers, or solve the problem that slows everyone down.
Those are the things an owner does.
Every hour you spend doing $25 work is an hour your business loses $500 thinking.
That’s the part most owners never calculate.
They look at the cost of hiring an assistant and think they’ll save money by doing the work themselves.
What they don’t see is the much larger cost of keeping the most valuable person in the company buried knee-deep in work that almost anyone could be trained to do.
This isn’t about acting important or believing certain work is beneath you. It is about understanding what the business needs from you today.
As your company grows, your job has to evolve.
The work that helped you build your business in the beginning may become the work that ends it.
You may not need a full-time employee. You might start with a part-time assistant, a virtual assistant, or someone already in the company who can take a few tasks off your plate.
Until you decide to protect your time, you’ll be the highest-paid assistant your company could possibly have.
The question is not whether you can afford to hire help, but what it is costing you not to.
That kind of thinking is playing the long game.
Keep playing the long game!
When you start a business, nobody hands you a manual. That’s why I write The Long Game.
Each week, I share stories, insights, and observations from the lessons I’ve learned—and the ones I’m still learning—about building a business, hiring the right people and creating a culture people want to be part of.
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