On first glance, the headline above contradicts itself; how does one feel motivated upon firing themselves? Isn’t that counterintuitive? As a business owner, finding yourself in the operator’s hot-seat demands your attention across all company fronts. Like Captain Kirk on the USS enterprise, each team member has a role to play; it is your primary duty to ensure your company is operating harmoniously as a seamless whole.
As discussed in a previous feature by Hippo, business-owners often feel obligated to assume every single responsibility without internal assistance, spreading themselves thin across a spate of tasks. Consequentially, symptoms of burn-out fatigue kick in, diminishing the quality of one’s decisions. Such symptoms are dangerous to your long-term health, and mental wellbeing. Reports by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) reveal that over 750,000 have died from heart-related ailments due to overworking and stress. Above all, business-owners soon lose sight of the company’s original objectives, too caught up in a never-ending list of “to-dos”.
As a business-owner, you are the company’s most valuable asset. Working like a wound-up spring is neither good for you, nor the business. It is a lose-lose situation, for both you and your company. The easiest solution to this predicament is a radical one: firing yourself! Well, we don’t expect you to literally fire yourself in Trump-ian fashion. Instead, we are simply suggesting you detach yourself from certain responsibilities. Here are two compelling reasons why firing yourself would help you find yourself.
- Quit being an everyman!
Today, the prevalence of hustle culture is felt across the working world. Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on their unyielding work ethic, maximizing economic and work efficiency every day with no pauses. Granted, the “grind” is a necessary evil for infant start-ups establishing their namesake, many veteran business-owners still feel an entrepreneurial pressure to wear all the pants in the company.
Hence, business-owners are essentially surrogate employees when they’re managing rote tasks they shouldn’t be performing. From marketing to accounting, they dip their toes across multiple departments. Why hire staff if you’re going to perform all of their tasks for them?
Business-owners must acknowledge that the entrepreneurial chip on their shoulder is one that is detrimental to your organization; there is nothing else to prove except your business success. According to our HIPPO bullseye, we encourage all business-owners to sidestep dispassionate tasks that are repetitive, mundane, and time-consuming. While we aren’t trying to downplay the importance of such activities, it is important for business-owners to give their own departments autonomy to complete them.
Relegate such dispassionate tasks to the departments with the necessary expertise to complete them, and funnel your business acumen into determining where your company is sailing towards. Do not let rote tasks derail your creative process. At the end of the day, your duty is to trust and lead the team, not be the team! Quit being a manager, and start acting like a business-owner.
- Looking Inward
As Junot Diaz once said: “The only way out, is in”. Unfortunately, managing so many competing responsibilities gives business-owners little time to re-evaluate both the business, and their aspirations for it. The urge to jump back and forth between multiple anxieties stems from a need to exercise control over situations. The future of any business is hazy as market forces quickly evolve overtime. Some businesses flourish and others collapse; it is the nature of the modern tiger economy.
Unfortunately, such an untenable reality seeds feelings of self-doubt, and persistent anxiety. In an attempt to overcompensate, business-owners undertake an unhealthy number of tasks to drown out those nagging concerns. Sadly, these methods often do little to numb those negative emotions. Live with emotional baggage long enough, and you’ll soon find yourself questioning everything you’re doing as a business-owner.
Buddhism, the foundational concept of detachment from the material world, encourages practitioners to consciously focus on what is immediately around us in the present moment by looking inward. The same principle applies to being a business-owner. Some repetitious responsibilities are simply not as important as others, and we should consciously identify what is worth our limited time. Thankfully, repetitious tasks of lower significance are still within the control of your departments; you simply need to diligently monitor their progress.
Detaching yourself from a lengthy list of arbitrary tasks gives you the mental space and time to re-orient yourself, and start mapping out the direction your business is headed in. Above all, time saved is more time for yourself. Capitalizing on the best profit-producing opportunities is an arduous burden on its own. Learn to let go, and let live!
There are a few caveats…
If you’re operating a company with a small handful of employees, then implementing the above solutions is much easier said than done. Tacking on more mundane tasks onto an already overworked team would do nothing but stretch them beyond their current work capacity. To make matters worse, the search and opportunity costs tied to finding an employee that best fits your company is another unavoidable hurdle. Being a small business, conserving both time and money is crucial.
At Hippo Business Services, we firmly believe that hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) is the most cost-efficient solution to this ordeal. Firstly, the cost of time is absorbed by us: we screen through an extensive list of potential applicants on your behalf, finding one that best matches what you are looking for. Secondly, virtual assistants are remunerated based on local rates in their immediate area, allowing you to save on the upfront costs of onboarding new, physical employees. Most importantly, employing a VA allows you to “fire yourself”, freeing up those tied hands for other more fruitive efforts!
Convinced? Feel free to shoot a few enquiries in our general direction, and we’ll respond to you as soon as possible! Capitalize on this excellent opportunity, and hire a VA with us today!
