Many business owners are guilty of falling into and in actual fact are encouraged to play to their strengths, it just makes good sense yet it can severely hold back the growth of the business.

If you could be a fly on the wall in most businesses you would see the business owner burying themselves day to day in playing to their strengths.

An accountant will be busy doing accounts, an electrician will immerse themselves into rewiring a house, a chef will be busy in the kitchen producing the perfect meal. But the big question is whilst they are busy working to their strengths the day job of the business so to speak who’s working on the business?

All businesses have challenges it’s the nature of the beast so taking the example of the chef let’s say for instance a challenge he may be facing is stock shortage problem and what you will often find is they can use their strengths in this case cooking as a way to escape thinking and facing up to the stock problem. In other words, they will get busy doing what they’re most comfortable doing.

Truth is they either need to face up to their role as the owner or recruit someone who can.

Great entrepreneurs rarely make this mistake and instead play to the needs of the business not to their skills and strengths. They tackle the big issues in their business. And their to do list will reflect the biggest challenges the business is facing and they’ll be addressing and solving them.

Their focus is on the business needs not their emotional needs. They understand that by fixing the biggest business challenges everything else will take care of itself and be so much more manageable.

They also understand that if a challenge is beyond their skills and capabilities, they’ll need to bring in someone who has the resources and know how to help them

I just want to be clear here that if for instance you are the chef or the accountant or the electrician and you love doing the day job, I’m not saying that you should stop doing it altogether.

I’m suggesting that if your serious about growing your business a much better approach is to prioritise the most important needs of the business and schedule in the day job and what you love doing around time spent fixing the important needs of the business.

Not sure what the biggest needs are right now ask your team, your customers and be prepared to hear the honest truth.

Knowing what needs doing and making sure it gets done are the signs of a true entrepreneur…