I was talking to two guys at the bar of a restaurant. One was an excavator with three pieces of heavy equipment (all paid for) and two other employees. He was proud of his business and he wanted to do better.
Another was a welder – self-employed, alone.
As we talked, I told them that the key skill to growing was team building. Other people doing the work you are doing now allows you to do higher-value work. The fact that they are both skilled at something makes them do that thing each day.
Since the world pays you for bringing value, they will find it very difficult to make more than an excavator or welder makes.
Of course, when your skill becomes your identity, it’s very hard to change – to not weld or dig, and to spend more time finding people to work for you, and on marketing or sales or innovation.
You can’t make more than $30 an hour if you keep doing $30 an hour work. If you want to make $200 an hour, you have to learn how to do $200 an hour work and be good at it.
(I want to say that there is nothing wrong with being a welder or excavator – we need good people doing these things. If a person is happy as a one or three-man shop, wonderful. This is advice for someone who wants to grow a business beyond a couple of employees, such as an excavation business, a welding business, or your business.)
Great reminder that I need almost daily! By surrounding myself with business minded individuals, I have learned a lot about owning my time and focusing on HVA’s vs what I am most comfortable at. I often have to ask myself, can this be delegated or even done at all.
My wife is going through this exact situation in her business right now. It’s completely transformational.
Yes, this is very helpful. For my business I’m scaling now and have been applying your team leading guidance from this post and your many other posts and this subject. Your writings have really opened my eyes to this principal.
As I’m self-funding and building on cash-flow, the people I need to lead and grow are in the six digits to hire. What we’ve done very successfully is to hire this high ticket professionals through Upwork.com. Our Upwork team consists of programmers, legal, marketing and PR. I’ve found it’s a lot less expensive and risky, at the early start up stage to build our team on Upwork, instead of hiring this talent.
Been reading your posts for years, they work, thank you!
There is so much truth to this. I was a field service technician in the CNC Machine tool industry. I’ve recently transitioned into sales. My skill set, and industry kept me from pursuing sales. “We need you servicing equipment, stay in your lane.” Finally I stopped listening to them and took the plunge. I’m enjoying my career in the same industry more than I ever have! Im excited to work! Don’t let people tell you not to grow.
Or, remodeling and home building! I’m good, but on the wrong kind of work
This reminds me of my Navy days when I was a First Class Petty Officer in charge of about 15 other Mechanics in my division. I was the senior guy and a pretty good mechanic in my own right, but every time my Chief caught me turning wrenches, I’d get chewed out by him.
Finally he told me, “Dan, that’s not your job anymore. Every hour you spend turning wrenches is an hour you’re not planning work for the division or learning how to do my job.”
It was a great lesson about not letting the skill set I was comfortable in cause myself, or others, to be less effective.
When I eventually made Chief, as my Chief foresaw, one of my mentors told me, “Dan, as the Chief, I don’t need to know where we keep the coolant pump tech manual – I just need to know who does.”
Great insight from great Leaders that I still remember from over 20 years ago.