There is a coaching  exercise that we go through with our coaching clients, all of them gifted creative business people. The exercise asks them to imagine that they are a busy,  large company. It asks them to think through all the different departments that are going to be necessary to keep this business going. They need to look at all of the jobs and details that it would take to become highly successful. Then, when the list is complete, the question turns to how is this different—or the same—from the business you now have? How many of these “Hats” do you personally need to wear—and find time for—in the scheduling of your week?

Hope you’ve got a big closet or a big head ’cause there’s a lot of them.

A Milliner’s Dream

Royal Weddings and the Kentucky Derby have nothing on the number of hats an entrepreneur has to wear. You are everything from the CEO to the cook and bottle-washer down in the cafeteria. But is it really necessary for you to wear so many?

One of the most difficult lessons to learn is when to delegate and differentiating your Genius Work from the day to day operations. Do you really have to be the one to buy the supplies or follow up on billing?

Here’s a short list of what most entrepreneurs need to deal with on a weekly basis:

• CEO
• Human Resources
• Billing
• Payroll
• Project management
• Clerical (filing, correspondence, appointments/schedule, etc)
• Marketing
• Production
• Art director
• Customer Service
• Public Relations
• Distribution
• Training
• Research and Development
• Sales
• Inventory
• Quality Control

Looking at those hats, how many of them can be delegated to someone else? If you said all of them, you’d be right. Even the CEO could be delegated in a big enough company. In a smaller company or solopreneur business, there might have to be a different way to delegate that accountability- like a business coach for example- but it’s still possible to get some help.

Delegation and Balance

When you find you’re spending more time working in your business rather than on it, it’s good if you can stop and get some help. Whether that help takes the form of a Virtual Assistant (VA) or an Outsourcer, it’s sometimes best to hand over those tasks to someone who handles that kind of thing as their own Genius Work.

Being accountable in your business doesn’t mean making it all work by going it totally alone. Lone Rangers have an unnecessarily hard road and it doesn’t have to be that way.

But what happens when you’re not big enough yet to hire people to help with all this? That’s when you have to find the balance. One of the common mistakes start-ups make is lack of strategic scheduling. Creative people love being creative. Business? What’s that? Oh…right…the part that actually pays the bills. They love to do the fun stuff first and save the unpleasant stuff for later.

The only problem with that is it keeps getting pushed farther and farther away. Before you know it, the taxes are overdue, you’ve missed a project deadline and things are starting to fall apart all over again. Now you have to do the mad scramble to set everything right, which leaves NO time for your Genius Work, you’re miserable and frustrated and cursing the day you ever decided to start a business.

Help Me Mr. Wizard! I Don’t Want To Be An Entrepreneur Anymore!

Sorry, Gandalf and Dumbledor can’t help you. However, you can help yourself. All it takes is a little planning and incorporating the ritual of checking in with your business at the beginning of each week.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Keep a spreadsheet of current projects and include the status and milestones of each (such as when first drafts are due, when you sent them, when they’re due back and the final deadline)
• Get a large desk calendar and use that instead of an online one. Seeing it right there and actually writing it down helps keep scheduling in order
• Once a week take stock of everything you’re doing and break it down into the ones you want to accomplish that week.
• Set priorities. Not every “Hat” in the company will be highlighted each week. But pick out the top two or three that are really demanding your attention and get them on the schedule.
• Practice Block Scheduling. Certain jobs need attention every single week. For those, go ahead and block out a specific time each week that will become sacred and habitual for that particular activity.

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