Myth: Just doing it yourself works best
One thing you run into quite often in the social media world is talk of entrepreneurship. A lot of it is advice – how to monitor your time, how to make the sale, how to deal with failure of your start-up stops up. A lot of the advice too is meant to be motivational. “Bring your website design in house. You can do it!” “Run your own social media campaign – here’s how!” And the list goes on and on.
Not coincidentally, another common thread of conversation has to do with a lack of time or time management or how to balance life and work. It’s as if the left hand isn’t telling the right hand, “Hey, you just decided you want to do everything having to do with your company all by yourself.” But in fact that is just what you have done. No wonder you’re short on time!
What do you need to do for your own company?
If you haven’t read Carol Roth’s The Entrepreneur Equation, you really need to buy it or get it out from the library and read that thing. I’d recommend buying it because if you’re interested in starting or maintaining a company, Carol outlines everything you need to worry about as the head of a business. A bit of a glimpse?
1. Actually running your company – making sure money is coming in and going out as it should
2. Managing your clients
3. Looking for new clients
4. Marketing your product/service
5. Coming up with new products/services
6. Managing employees if you have any
7. Worrying about things like new tax structures, new healthcare structures, retirement plans – whether just for you or for you and your employees
And of course each of these categories includes endless sub-categories of other stuff you need to do. If you think just about marketing, the list can be nearly endless. Website, SEO, content, PR, developing your brand, advertising, mailing, email, e-newsletters, social media (yes, social media is *just* a sub-category under marketing in this case)…phew.
When you look at that list, it sure seems like any entrepreneur has more than enough to do. And yet, many entrepreneurs insist that they can do every single thing on this list (and more) with no assistance whatsoever. Speaking as a person who has spent a career (so far) *just* working on the marketing aspect of a business for other companies, I have to say that this seems rather delusional and probably dangerous.
A lack of understanding about marketing (real marketing)
One of the reasons I started this series, as you might have guessed, is that I feel social media is diluting what marketing really entails. That’s too bad because one of the things I love about most marketing tactics is that there’s an art to it. There isn’t just a simple “Do this for dummies” approach that I would be happy with.
Take, for example, the much maligned art of media placement. This is how I started in the marketing world. You might thing (assuming that you haven’t been convinced advertising is stupid) that placing an ad is really pretty easy. You choose something like the Wall Street Journal, you buy an ad, done. Right? Well, if that is your approach in your effort to do everything, you are missing out on so many important considerations. For example, where are your competitors advertising? Are they advertising? What is the circulation of that publication like? Can you get a better deal or does the publication stick pretty close to the rate card? Is there an extra fee for good placement? Would an insert be a better investment than an ad? Is it worth it to run a quarter-page black-and-white ad?
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Most marketing tactics include a lot of details that I fear people are now glossing over. If you want a new brochure, are you making sure all of your brochures share the same general aesthetic so people know it’s you? If you’re sending a direct mail piece, are you aware of all of the strange postal rules, like how far down on the piece you are allowed to have content?
Since I’m an agency woman, it might be easy to dismiss my concerns as self-serving. Sure, I would love if every entrepreneur contacted us and said, “Ahhhhhhhhh!” Well, maybe not. But this is not about a sales pitch for our agency or agencies in general. My concern is that no one seems to be really concerned about this “do everything” mode of work in which people are engaged. Is it realistic to think you can continue to handle the SEO for the website you designed and wrote the copy for while managing your new product/service and also keeping a grip on the latest tax rules? To me, this seems like an unnecessary invitation to harm. Because on any facet of work you are doing yourself, whether it’s marketing or customer service or HR, a big mistake can literally spell doom for your business.
Whether you hire an agency to handle your broad spectrum of marketing, a freelance web designer, a person to help you with your HR, or any other sort of help for any other facet of your business, I don’t want you to feel like you are now a failure. Getting help in all of these areas is a sign of realism. It’s proof to me that you are fully aware of all of the minute details that can come back and bite you in the butt. So long as the general chant is, “You can do everything,” I feel like many don’t truly understand how business as a whole, or any part of it, really works.
What do you think? Should an entrepreneur do everything, or is that just crazy talk?
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilhelmja/2947831308/ via Creative Commons
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Nobody is smart enough to master a business line and marketing. (You could substitute for “marketing” the words accounting, finance, HR and a number of other disciplines.) But entrepreneurs are nonetheless encouraged to embrace this delusion. If you read the recent biogaphy of Steve Jobs, you learn that Jobs’ first step from selling personal computers from his garage to the Apple we know today was attracting a marketing pro to his tiny team.
@Bob James Hi Bob! Long time no talk to! I am not sure it’s a matter of smarts so much as it’s a matter of there only being so much time in a day. If you try to do absolutely everything, something (or perhaps many things) will fall in quality, and for a business that can be awfully dangerous.
Margie, I super agree with this post. You are really touching on 2 points: 1. Don’t do it all yourself and 2. Don’t assume you know everything (or the 27 year old kid whose blog you read knows everything.)
I’ve stopped reading all the online ‘expert’ blogs because they sell their opinion. It is in no way based on any research or broader experience than their own returns. “This works for me, so it should work for you” is honestly stupid advice. And I use the word “stupid” intentionally. This is why I no longer attend any bloggy conferences because it is business/marketing amateur hour and frustrates the pants off of me.
Now off to buy Carol’s book….
@susangiurleo I am not sure it’s stupid, but it does resemble a significant lack of experience. Most bloggy experts have not worked in your field. Heck, they haven’t worked in my field and yet they consign all marketing to death barring social media. Talk about silly!
I am not really sure where this attitude of “do everything or die” comes from. Maybe it’s the new rendition of the American dream, but if people are thinking they really can do everything, it’s no wonder half of all Americans are on anti-depressants. What high, nay, impossible standards to hold for oneself.
Great post Margie! I think, speaking for myself, it comes down to funding. I think it makes all the business sense in the world to have experts handle the things they are expert at, but there is not always money to do so. I think in many cases, this leads to a longer runway, and sometimes that lack of professional help leads to failure, but there is not always a choice.
@Adrian Hoppel I understand that. I guess at some point you need to weigh the pros and cons. Where are your energies best going to be spent? Should you be working on writing your own blog or should you be creating new products? Should you be attending an HR conference or traveling to see clients? This is another huge point Carol Roth makes in her book. You need to not just have a plan when you start a business, but it needs to be a darned realistic one.
I like the emphasis on checking out your competitors marketing strategy. This is a wonderful time saver, and just smart. Why do what so-and-so in another industry is doing? Stick to your niche first, I say. If everyone is showing videos of their private practice office on their website, well, it may be time to consider this…:). Just kidding, I don’t want my prospective clients distracted from the hot girl in the front office ;).
“You can do everything” is a recipe for burnout. Delegating is where it’s at.
Thanks for the reminder!
@LindaEsposito Thanks Linda. It’s definitely a matter of standing squarely in your own industry, whatever that might be. It doesn’t make sense to talk to teachers, doctors, manufacturers, and bankers in the exact same way, yet this is what a lot of advice seems to try to do. Factually, all of this stuff is radically different. There is a craft to most things, and the “mass production” model seems to sort of take the air out of the artsy balloon. How’s that for a horribly mixed metaphor? 🙂
An entrepreneur, at the beginning, doesn’t really have much of a choice but to do everything themselves, right? But once money is coming in and there is actually a budget to work with, it’s foolish for an entrepreneur to continue to do everything themselves. If a lawyer decides to start their own firm, it’s because they are an expert in LAW, not marketing…accounting…HR, etc.
I agree, Margie, that there is no valid “do this for dummies” approach, I think that marketing tactics actually should based on more science and less “art” than a lot of people assume. We pay attention to where our clients’ competitors are sharing their message, but even if 99% of their competitors are involved in a specific media, if our research shows that their message can get to their prospects effectively in another way, we may choose to go somewhere else.
@LuftigWarren I am not 100% sure you even need to do everything at the beginning. I think you can work out a plan and roll different things out in a sensible manner. If you don’t have a product or service fully rounded yet, there’s no real reason to start marketing. If you don’t have any employees yet, you don’t need to become 100% well versed in HR stuff. Pace yourself. And I do think entrepreneurs are wise to have a cursory understanding of everything that touches their business. But delegation is pretty darned essential in my book.
HI Margie,
As a virtual assistant, I do encourage my clients to outsource and delegate those back-end or admin tasks that are more “time suckers” and do not generate income. I believe their valuable time is best spent on projects and tasks that ONLY they can do, their core genius items, revenue generators.
So many of the day to day aspects of running a business are extremely time consuming and tedious. While they are necessities of success, they may take us away from business development, lead generation, customer service, product growth and so forth. When an entrepreneur chooses to delegate some of the daily tasks, they are afforded enhanced productivity and time management to focus on their expertise and business.
@AceConcierge Very well said! Speaking of time suck, that’s where the emphasis on social media for entrepreneurs can get really dangerous. If you’re not careful you can end up spending 12 hours a day just doing that, and that won’t make you any money at all, especially at the beginning of your journey. Bottom line – asking for help is a sign of strength!
They really can’t do everything effectively…they need to be able to flex across a wide variety of activities, and get their hands dirty when necessary, but have SMEs, especially in core operational, technology, and revenue-generating areas. (Marketing being an excellent example of this.) Otherwise, they are likely to find themselves either a) DOING a whole lot of NOTHING or b) doing nothing exceptionally well.
@AllynHorne Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Be a jack of all trades, master of none. You should be the heart of your business, not the hands and feet. In an ideal world, anyway.
Once upon a time I worked as a project manager for a general contractor. I used to have a field day signing up the DIY people who bit off more than they could chew.
They didn’t know how to do electrical/plumbing but figured that they could teach themselves. Some of them did a nice job of it but were surprised by how much time it took.
Most just mucked things up really badly and ended up paying a lot more by hiring a professional to come fix their mistakes. Falls into the same category as operating on yourself.
@TheJackB yeah, it’s an easy trap to fall into. I had a choir teacher who often used the example of the swimming duck. Everything on the surface looks really easy and you think, “Huh, I could swim like a duck all day.” Then you look below the surface and see how fast those feet are pedaling. Not quite so easy as it seemed.
Margie! Hi there!
I had to come over because I hoped that by doing so, I could help someone.
I am a “manager”… by that I don’t mean the part of me that is the “Manager” for Pioneer Outfitters, but rather a deep part of my makeup. Nobody can do it like I can…. Sound familiar? Yeah.
The fact is, there ARE people who can do things better …and WILL… if I just let them. This is a hard one for me. I still struggle with it every day, every new fun thing, job or crisis. Do you know what I found, over years of trying to improve myself? There just isn’t enough of me. When I try to do it all, nothing has my complete attention.
Thank you for a great reminder.
@girlygrizzly This is a very very easy trap to fall into. I have the same problem. “Oh heck, by the time I explain it to you I could just do it.” But I think people use this as a way to manipulate others and get out of work. Perhaps without realizing it, they catch on über slowly or make a lot of mistakes until you finally say, “Ogh, fine. I’ll do it.” You have to resist that catch-22 and make people stand on their own two feet. That’s the only way you can end up with a person you can count on, right?