If you want to grow and scale your business, it is vital that you get help from others. 

No one, and I repeat, no one can run a business all by themselves. You might be able to do ‘something’ by yourself, but then you’re not a businessman, you are in fact a sole trader. We must understand that a sole trader is different from a businessman. 

“Success is when your business runs itself as you relax thousand miles away.”

Unknown

Apart from the legalities of having an officially registered company and tax structure etc., a business in my definition is something that runs all by itself. The aim should be to get it to a point where you as a business owner have minimum oversight and involvement in running your business. Sole traders unfortunately don’t do that. They are firefighting all the time. From delivery to winning clients, to invoicing and getting paid etc.      

So what stops people from getting businesses to that independent stage? A key blocker is when leaders and business owners like doing things all by themselves. They want to be involved in everything. They want to make all the decisions. They want to build relationships with customers, and so on. 

This is NOT how businesses and organisations are built. Such people will always cause blockers and will not let you grow your business because everything has to go through them, and I mean everything. 

Do you know what the key problem is? It’s because they don’t trust other people to do anything for them. They don’t have confidence in people doing the job; and their capabilities and competence. So, they always want to be involved in the process. They always want to take charge of the situation and steer it to how they feel fit.  

“I always find people smarter than I am. Then my job is to make sure smart people can work together. Stupid people can work together easily, smart people can’t.” 

Jack Ma, Co-founder of Alibaba Group

So how do you get this help? It’s always the people in business that help you. To grow and scale up your business no one can do it by themselves. You need help from other people who are competent and skilled. People are key in running any business, in particular smart people. So it is key to look after them, make them feel important, give them more responsibility and develop them.  

As a businessman, you can’t be in the same place all the time. So, processes have to be built, and systems have to be put in place to help with this endeavour. 

“Fundamentally the (startup) founder has to be super lazy”

Ashneer Grover, Indian Entrepreneur

So where do we start? We start by making sure that the business partners you choose are ‘lazy’ (to quote Ashneer Grover). But what do I mean by this?

I don’t mean being physically lazy, but what I mean is that they have a mindset of letting others do the work for them i.e. someone who’s not afraid to delegate and focus on results and outputs.

Look for people who have a vision for the business and are willing to trust other people to run their businesses for them. So look at their track record before you decide. 

Trust as I mentioned is missing from the equation, but trust is something that is built through a lot of factors. Some of these factors include training, learning & development, recruitment, providing opportunities to staff etc., but that’s a conversation for another time.

Take my friend from the local sports club for example, he has a couple of businesses. He is the kind of person who would want to do everything by himself. All the decisions have to go through him. He will decide ‘x’, he will decide ‘y’, and he will decide ‘z’. 

In his newly found business, where he is selling products on Amazon, this is a huge problem, where he causes obstacles in business growth and scalability – Why? Because he can’t trust others to do anything for him. He believes he knows more, which is why he always wants to be involved in the process. 

It reminds me of a famous quote that most entrepreneurs write in their books all the time: “Don’t work for money, but let the money work for you.” I hope this quote is something that many can find inspirational, especially this friend of mine. It’s the control and involvement in everything that doesn’t let him scale and grow his business. 

Having said that, he does however have a very successful online business. But know this, it doesn’t take many people to run and develop technology / online businesses, and scalability with an online business is a lot easier than some other businesses out there. 

I still feel he can make his business a lot bigger than what it is at the moment. All he needs to do is ‘Let go’, and start trusting other people, start delegating and build a competent team.  

Conclusion

The key point is that the business partners that you bring along should have a vision for your business, but more importantly, they are not afraid to trust people out there and delegate to them. I find that many times, business owners don’t trust others to do the work for them. This is where such people trap themselves as they can’t seem to let go of control. 

They don’t trust people and their delivery. They are always stuck in the trenches and think that things will go wrong if they are not involved in the process. They like being ‘hands-on’; but if you want to grow your business, you need someone who is okay with having a ‘hands-off’ approach and doesn’t mind getting out of the trenches. 

Unfortunately, it’s this mindset that doesn’t let you grow your business into anything bigger, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you’re happy with it, then that’s okay too. It’s simply a choice you are willing to live with, but know there is another way.  

If the goal is to make something bigger, then you have to let go and trust people around you to take charge of the situation to help grow your business. That’s why, to quote Jack Ma, it becomes hugely important to recruit competent people, people who are smarter than you, who can then help you run your business. Where people fail or lack scalability is their ability to take risks, and their ability to be courageous.