Let’s face it.

We entrepreneurs think we can do it all.

At least, we do….until we realize we can’t.

If you don’t come to that realization at the right time, you can miss out on a ton of growth.

When I was getting started, I did it all. I was the bookkeeper, the marketing guy, the sales guy, the CEO, the HR guy, the executive assistant, the client director…you name it.  Like I said, I did it all. And that’s the way it should be in the beginning.  When you start a small businesses , you don’t have the budget to hire a team or outsource these responsibilities.  You have no choice but to do it all!

But once you get to a certain level, that no longer works.  Not only do you reach a point where you phsyically can’t handle all of the responsibilities, but your reluctance to give them up actually prevents your small business from further growth. I hit that realization head on when our company had 4 employees.  At that point, I had a small team, sure.  But they were all 100% focused on client services.  I was still wearing all the other hats.

Two of the biggest hats I wore were marketing and sales.  I was solely responsible for generating traffic and leads, and I was the guy who was responsible for turning a percentage of those leads into clients.

We were growing, and it was at this point that I clearly saw that if I didn’t get out of the way…we would cease to grow.  There just wasn’t enough time in the day.

'If I didn't get out of the way, my #SmallBusiness would cease to grow' Click To Tweet

Time to Hire a Marketing Manager

The first decision I made was to promote one of our account managers, Ryan, to an internal marketing role.  Ryan quickly took to running ad campaigns, building funnels, email marketing, and basically took all the stuff off of my plate that I was half-assing.  The results were quick.  In a short amount of time, by having a dedicated team member solely focused on marketing my small business, we were generating more leads than I could handle.

Which led me to the next big decision…

Hiring a Full Time Salesperson

Unless I abandoned all of my other duties as small business owner and CEO, there was no way I could continue acting as the salesperson as well.

So, about 2 months after creating the Marketing Manager position, I recruited and hired an old friend of mine who was selling for a lead generation firm that specialized in pay-per-click.  Our company, LinkedSelling, generates leads for our clients via LinkedIn.  It was a good parallel, and he was able to quickly get up to speed and take the sales responsibilities fully off of my plate.

With these two new hires in place, it took only a couple months before we were growing at a record rate.

The first full year after making these hires, we tripled our revenue.

During that next year, we continued reinvesting some of our profits into new internal marketing positions and hiring a couple more sales people.  At this point, we have 3 people on our internal marketing team and 3 sales people.

You might not be surprised to hear that we tripled our revenue again the next year.

Could I have done all this on my own?

Hell no. We would’ve been stuck as a 4-person small business forever.

But…I got out of my own way. I realized that if I kept trying to do it all, the company would remain stagnant.

So, are You the Reason Your Small Business isn’t growing?

If this story rings true for you, maybe you’re at a point where it’s time to step aside.  Maybe it’s time to grow your team or utilize outsourced contractors, in order to increase the capacity and effectiveness of your organization.

At the end of the day, you gotta look in the mirror and seriously ask yourself…

Am I the reason my small business isn’t growing?  Is it time to get out of my own way?

#Business Owners ask yourselves 'Am I the reason my small business isn't growing?' #CXO Click To Tweet

What do you find most hard about releasing control of responsibilities to other employees? Share your thoughts in the comments below!