Entrepreneurial Tightrope: DIY? Not always

Recently someone asked me to name just one vital tip to keep a business healthy and steadily growing.

Of course there are a myriad of things that have to be dealt with to keep a business running smoothly. However, because many of us entrepreneurs start out in business doing every chore and detail ourselves it's easy to lose sight of how we are spending our time. This can morph into many things from draining our energy to draining the life and energy from the business.

We have to learn to recognize and minimize distractions so that we can focus on the larger things that make a business work, like building relationships, developing and expanding new services and products, and being available for the opportunities that can push our companies forward.

To do this we must be prepared to hire skilled and competent people that we can trust to handle the details while we focus on the larger things that can only be handled by the head of the company. And yet, it is so easy for a small businessperson to get caught up in minor details.

Shortly after I left the travel business I was shopping at a Home Depot when I ran into a former colleague who was still in the industry. We chatted briefly about all of the ups and downs of the travel business and other minor things. The Home Depot store was only five minutes from my house but 30 minutes from his downtown office. So I asked him what brought him to the neighborhood. He told me that he was buying cleaning supplies and a can of WD-40 to oil a squeaky door at the office. We talked a few minutes more and parted ways promising to keep in touch.

A couple weeks later I was downtown near his office and stopped in to say hello. He said that he had been a little down in the dumps for a couple weeks. He went on to say that he had always wanted to be interviewed by a national magazine or newspaper to bring more visibility to his company. He had even spent money with a consultant to help him get featured with major media and nothing had happened.

But, according to him, that day that he was busy buying cleaning supplies and WD-40 a national newspaper was doing a story on the seasonal travel trends and someone had suggested the reporter call him for an interview. However, as it is in the newspaper business, time is of the essence and when he wasn't available the reporter had to move on to the next person.

This is an example of what can happen when we take on task that could be best left to others and focus on bigger pictures. Certainly I am not suggesting that you sit around your office or store waiting for the media's phone call. But I am suggesting that you take a close look at how you use your time.

Hopefully, my colleague learned that day the price of doing something that someone else could have done just as well, so that he could be available to do the thing that no one but him, in his office, could do.

Gladys Edmunds, founder of Edmunds Travel Consultants in Pittsburgh, is an author and coach/consultant in business development. Her column appears Wednesdays. E-mail her at gladys@gladysedmunds.com. An archive of her columns is here. Her website is gladysedmunds.com.