You’re No Superhero: Stop Going At It Alone and Build Your Team
I don’t understand most marketers. They feel the need to do everything themselves as if they possess some superpower normally unbestowed to mere mortals. Yes, often we have to wear a lot of hats as entrepreneurs, but if you plan to take your business to the NEXT LEVEL, let me help you put a stop to that kind of thinking right now.

Consider the people you really admire in business. You may be an Apple fanboy (or girl) who thinks Steve Jobs is the greatest human since Jesus. Or maybe you aspire to follow tech superheroes like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Larry Page and build your own billion dollars plus startup.

Who comes to mind when I ask you to picture your business heroes? Have you read their stories? Did you notice something all of these greats have in common? There isn’t a single one of them that summited the mountain of success, stood at the top and was able to brag that they did it alone. Not a one.

Yet most entrepreneurs (myself included here, thank you) think we have to go it alone. We need a course layout or a product image, so we decide to dabble in graphic design.

Issues with customer support? I can do that!

Editing and distributing every piece of our content? Yep, sign me up!

Learning one new piece of software every month in the hopes that it will explode our business? Yes please, sounds like a blast!

Give it to me, we say. I can do that myself. We honestly believe we can learn each and every one of these skills and be GREAT at them, while behind the scenes, we’re just trying to keep the wheels rolling in our business and the revenue coming in consistently.

“Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” — Steve Jobs

Now there may be some of you out there who can do it. You’re able to learn new skills at a rapid pace and across completely different disciplines: creative, technical, logistical, front end, support, fulfillment, accounting, marketing, content, etc. Thankfully, most of us aren’t gifted enough to do that.

The vast majority of people are talented in one or two key areas. I mean truly have a natural ability or expertise in a specific discipline. And yet we don’t double down on those gifts and talents that come naturally to us. Why? Because we’re too busy putting out fires, endlessly checking off to-do lists, and yep, trying to do it all ourselves.

May I suggest another way?

STOP. Stop doing anything at all you’re not gifted at or truly enjoy doing and start building your team. Do it today.

It bears repeating: each and every one of those great business leaders, heck anyone who’s even had moderate success in business, has done it with a team.

What does that look like? It doesn’t necessarily mean going out and hiring a bunch of employees; you may not be at that point yet. Perhaps it’s simply contracting with freelancers who are excellent at what they do. Experts who have years of experience and are light years ahead of you, but you’ve been too cheap to pay them. I’m talking about people who are equally as passionate as they are gifted at what they do.

Take for example, social media marketing. That’s not something I’m naturally gifted at. When I see a chart with numbers and ad sets and cost per leads, I start to nod off. It’s not something I like to do, care to do or am passionate about in any way. So I hired a team. I found someone to manage all of my Facebook ads, make sure I’m profitable and focus on what they have a proven track record of doing well. These guys are rockstars.

Could I have learned about Facebook advertising and attempted to do it myself? Certainly. But at what opportunity cost? How long would it take me to truly become excellent at that? And what about the 28 other completely unrelated skills I need to acquire to be able to launch and run a seven-figure online marketing machine?

See, while my Facebook campaigns chug along day after day making me sales and taking ZERO time out of my schedule, I’ve been able to do what I love and am truly gifted at. I’ve booked interviews with mainstream media and podcasts, created amazing new content for my clients, secured a book deal and started writing my first chapter, and am speaking on stages and inspiring people. That’s what I’m good at, and my team fills in the gaps for anything that I’m not.

I jump out of bed each day with energy and passion and genuine excitement because I’m now having a whole lot more fun. Who would have thought? I’m operating at a completely different level now because I have a team.

So the next time you have a task in front of you, I want you to start asking these questions: Should I be doing this? Am I the best person to tackle this? Remind yourself that you have a finite number of hours today. Are you using those hours to work on your most important tasks? Could a virtual assistant do the task for you? Could a freelancer do this work? Are you great at this? Is this something you’re absolutely committed to becoming an expert in? If not, it’s unlikely you’ll be great at it.

So what if it costs you to hire these people. It’s not a cost, it’s leverage. It’s the ability for you to stop flapping your wings at 1,000 feet and instead soar at 30,000. Heck, let’s go to the stratosphere and start thinking higher level.

You may be at a point where you’re just starting out and not sure you can afford a team. But I can tell you right now, if you plan to own a business that scales, or to build a brand that has legs, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when you’ll need to start putting your team together.

So start looking right now for the ROCKSTARS at what they do. Work with a lot of people in a given discipline before sticking with one. Be quick to move on but loyal once you find someone who has skills in the areas you don’t. Give up some control. Let them start taking on more and get yourself to a point where you can start implementing higher level thinking.

Lebron is great, yes, but there’s no team he could win a championship against if he were on the court alone.

Get out of the weeds, my superhero friend, and I promise you, it will all be weeds if you don’t start relying on others.