Are You a Great Professional But not as Good a Business Manager? Remove Yourself as the Bottleneck of Your Business

Anyone can start a business no matter the industry. But the real challenge begins when it’s time to run it and build it into a successful venture. While some people were born natural managers, not every entrepreneur has the managerial skills needed to handle the daily operations, build and maintain a great team and oversee the many projects that come with growing a business. But the thing is, you don’t need the skills yourself to manage a flourishing business. Especially if you are a business owner in a profession that doesn’t fall in the line of management it might not be the best use of your time to try and learn how to do all that yourself. 

Anja Riemer-Grobe, the founder and CEO of Management Made Easy is a management expert with a superpower in organizing projects, teams, and client experiences in a structured way. She does all that while keeping the needs and wants of everyone involved in mind. With the online business management service, Anja focuses on building trust in client relationships by leveraging virtual tools, remote work, and online operations. That creates a consistent client-focused service experience for her clients. She is also one of the founding members of the Association of Virtual Assistants, a certified executive travel planner, and a certified Psychological Advisor (Marriage and Relationships).  

Over the years Anja has helped many entrepreneurs manage their businesses so they can keep doing what they are experts in. She has a unique approach of combining well-organized structures and processes with building strong relationships of trust and authenticity. 

We talked to Anja about how to remove yourself as the bottleneck of your business and make sure your business relationships are strong and reliable.

Delegation

Most entrepreneurs have some degree of fear to leave their business in the hands of other individuals. It is understandable to have some trust issues, but you should not let such factors drag down your business. Delegation, if done right and effectively,  will help to remove a lot of work from your hands. Not only the type of work that you don’t know how to do but also the type of work that uses up a lot of your time. It is also a good idea to let an employee or colleague do what is aligned with their expertise, instead of figuring things out yourself. You might find that you have been standing in the way of the progress of your own business.

Don’t be the bottleneck, learn to delegate responsibilities to get things done. Ensure the objectives are clear and equip your delegatee with the right tools to do the job. Give guidelines if you have to and follow up on the work to keep the progress on track. Also, address concerns by employees while being open to new ideas. Who knows? Maybe your staff is coming up with ideas on how to do things that you didn’t even think about. You might be surprised at what your employees are capable of doing for your business, if you allow it.

Delegation will give you all the time you need to focus on other things besides the day to day. That might lead you to get more clients, improve your offers and services or just take some well-deserved time off. So if you think you have some other higher-level task you should be doing, delegating your busy work is the solution. By doing so, you give your team members the chance to learn and develop new skills. That comes in handy when you are not around to do everything yourself or your goal is to build a remote environment in your business. It’s always good to know your business is running even when you can’t get there yourself. Eventually, the trust that you are building between you and your staff by delegating and letting others shine improves communication, efficiency, productivity, and everyone’s time management.

Despite delegation having so many perks, not every entrepreneur is naturally inclined to do it. Many still feel it is too much work and/or too difficult to handle. Why is that so? Well, one of the reasons is because delegating tasks does not eliminate accountability. That means that even after giving up responsibility for some tasks, you are still accountable for the success or failure of the business. Another reason is that delegating requires a lot of time to do mentorship and training. Most business owners don’t feel like they have that time and they’d rather be the ones in control of everything that goes on in their companies. Not every entrepreneur is ready to loosen their grip on something they created.

Maintain the Trust

Building trust between a business owner and their employees is vital for efficiently running a business. Managing people is a big part of management. If you want there to be trust between you and your team you must manage and lead them the way you would want them to manage your clients. Let’s face it, not every entrepreneur out there has people skills. There is nothing wrong with that, but you can’t let that affect your business. 

Keeping the trust between you and your clients means that doing your work for them is much easier and your clients are feeling loyal towards your business, even in hard times. Anja says that focusing on trust-building and establishing a strong relationship with your clients should be equally important than your efforts in marketing and sales. After all, keeping the clients you have is much cheaper than constantly finding new ones.

If you’re finding yourself in a perpetual struggle to extinguish fires in your business, mediating team issues, juggling client tasks and keeping up with projects the solution might be to get better at delegating, client management, productivity, technology …. – the list of things to learn will probably never stop. Or you could use a totally different solution: Get a manager with the right skill set to take care of your business for you. Although the second option is rather common in large corporations most of the solo professionals and entrepreneurs with small teams out there don’t even think about hiring a manager as a valid option for their businesses. However, the truth is: the choice is yours.

Make sure that there is a consistent high trust experience between you, your team, and your clients. Rest easy knowing that all of your projects are moving along. Relax because your day to day operations are handled without you needing to make every small decision yourself.

Don’t be afraid to have a second set of eyes you can trust to handle your business.