Mitigate your weaknesses

Experienced entrepreneurs know: Their role is to organize incoherent resources into usable, marketable substances. Seeing opportunities and being able to pursue them before they slip away is the ultimate skill that a businessperson should know. On the other hand, the knowledge of production, accounting, finance, advertising, logistics, or any other science with which you may or may not be familiar could sometimes be useful, but by no means absolutely necessary for a profitable venture. In fact, and I am reiterating an earlier thought in this article, as an entrepreneur, you are to find and capture the needed resources, not attempt to be the sole human resource in your company. Building a team of experts in a collection of fields is a major task that you have to go through. However, once you get the hang of recruitment, human resources will be your biggest asset that will complement your other expertise and tools.

Find strategic partners
If you, an experienced art visionary, decide to start a film studio from scratch, you might run into problems along the financial side of running your venture. Despite your thorough understanding of scripting, casting, filming, and editing, setting up an accounting system or finding buyers for your art would be difficult. In fact, you should anticipate such trouble, since working as an artist probably left with very little entrepreneurial experience. This is where the good news come in: As the owner of a company, you have complete discretion as to the people with whom you work. Do some networking and get yourself a business partner with an MBA, a CPA, an MFA or a Red Cross CPR certification. You decide who it will be. The partner's knowledge of your industry may be limited to appreciation from a distance, but what matters is the quality of that person's contributions to your entreprise. A good partner will let you concentrate on the knowledge and skills you already posess, because he will do the things that you haven't yet learned.
Finding the opposite of your professional self for the sake of complementing your skills and building a coherent system brings an entreprise closer to its goals and works for anybody: for the introverted who struggle with extensive communication that leadership requires, for business enthusiasts like me and Nick who might lack the precise knowledge of an industry, for people who think strategically and might need someone else to come up with the tactical details of the company, and everybody else. None of us are perfect enough to be the best at everything. That's why you should concentrate on being the best at what you enjoy most, and let your patner excel at those other things you'd rather not do.

Develop a pool of sub-contractors
Most tasks, however, are less all-encompassing as running an entire business: making an advertisement, training new employees, editing sound in a newly shot film, and so on. These. Activities are miniscule enough to not simply raise the question of you not having the right skills to execute them, but also the question of you not having enough time to deal with the detailed, yet not too important, work that they involve. Getting an additional business partner on board for each one of these purposes is too burdensome. Instead, a pool of sub-contractors should fill the gap between your abilities and your firm's needs. This pool should consist of entities where you can outsource the tasks that lie outside your and your partners' productivity reach. Additionally, your firm's employees, if you have the need and resources for them, also fall into this pool of sub-contractors. Knowing beforehand where you can go for the execution of the tasks that go into the production of your ending product can save you time and unnecessary worries, so keep a list of your business contacts ready.

Master delegation
Once you develop a team of experts and doers behind your back, communication skills are key. In order for the vast resources you accumulate to reach their full potential, you need to learn how to effectively delegate tasks to other people. It is thus important to learn how to be clear while abstaining from micromanaging. These skills largely come with experience, although one can read some business literature and listen to professional gurus in order to understand the precise process behind delegation. In fact, right now, I am going to delegate a more elaborate explanation of this process to experts in this field, Mark Henricks and Mark Levi.


Explore automation opportunities
There are certain business tasks that, not without the help of technological innovations, can be done by computers or other automated process wholly or at least in part. One example of this is bookkeeping. Today, there are plenty of software platforms that run from simple to corporate-level that allow business owners to make their own records. Some examples of free programs like this are Outright and certain versions of QuickBooks. While these options are not for everyone, it is of course a good idea to be aware of any technology with the slightest hint of potential at making running a business easier, because entrepreneurship is already complex enough.

With eac one of the four approaches covered today, one should be thoroughly aware of the purpose behind his decisions. Since human resources make for by far the biggest expense in most firms, placing too little thought into hiring someone can lead to many different but equally undesirable results. Nevertheless, by no means should one exclude the option of complementing one's weaknesses with outside help, because the right human resources approach can lead to dramatic increases in return on investment, thus becoming that proverbial extra degree that brings a pot to a boil.

We hope that the coming week treats you well, and that you get a chance to successfully implement the advice that NVSBS offers you. Should you incur questions, or if you just want to give us some feedback, be sure to comment on our blog or drop us an e-mail. And, any readers who still have not subscribed should do so right now, so you can, too, get our fresh advice automatically delivered to you.