Frank Sinatra didn’t move his own pianos

I’d like to share a big secret with you that successful business owners know: to have an ideal business, work less and make a whole lot more, you CANNOT do it by yourself. 

You must outsource!

You know how I know this? Because for years, I tried to do everything in my business by myself. 
It didn’t work. In fact, I remember getting on the phone with my coach and crying for the first eight minutes of our coaching call. He listened patiently as I sobbed and then said just one thing to me:

“Fabienne, Frank Sinatra didn’t move his own pianos.”

Silence on the phone. 

I stopped crying and it was like The Truth had been spoken. It may seem like a “duh” moment to you, but when I heard this for the first time, it felt like the clouds had parted and the answer to all my problems were streaming down from the sky.

I realized that I had been trying to “move my own piano”, instead of focusing on my brilliance and my “genius” work – the stuff that I’m good at and that only I can do in my business.

Soon after, I began DELEGATING different aspects of my business to others. My business, my bank account (and my sanity) increased as a result (and yours will too.) 

The fact is, you cannot do it all on your own either. 

No matter how much you like to think that you can do it better, faster and more efficiently than anyone else, the fact remains that you will eventually burn out.

You must leverage your time and resources if you are serious about running a successful business, and finally making a good income being self-employed. And getting it all done means you will want to eventually start outsourcing and delegating.

The thing is, you can wait like I did until you nearly crumble into a state of near exhaustion where things are falling through the cracks left and right OR you can start getting assistance NOW, before you ever get to that place.

This means delegating specific things to someone who’s happy to do them for you:

• Stuff you’re not good at
• Stuff you don’t know how to do
• Stuff you don’t have time to do
• Anything outside of your brilliance/genius (meaning, everything other than the stuff only you can do in your business)

Delegating allows you to strengthen your strengths, instead of trying to “better” your weaknesses. It means only working on your core competencies and focusing on your brilliance and genius work. In turn, you’ll get more done, make more money and enjoy more time off for the important things in life (like your family, your friends, you know, the important stuff).

It’s the ultimate leverage, and there are plenty of wonderful people out there who would love to help you with that.

Today, I have a full team covering operations, marketing, sales and a second-in-command/CEO in charge (who happens to be my talented husband Derek), so I can focus on doing what I do best: speaking, writing, coaching, and creating content that changes lives. 

And because of it, we as a team are able to produce so much more than I’ve ever been able to on my own, and serve so many more wonderful people.

And the good news is, you can start slowly and ramp up from there, like I did.

Here’s what I want you to do:

• Calculate what you’re worth per hour when you’re doing your Brilliance/Genius work (that which only you can do)
• Make a list of all the things you do each day
• Attach a monetary value to what you could pay someone to outsource this to

For example, let’s assume you’re worth $200 per billable hour. Ideally you should be generating $200 or more for EACH hour you work. However, I’ll guess you’re doing dozens of things each day that someone charges less for (and is happy to do for $15, $25, $45, $75, etc.) These are the things you want to outsource, so you can make $200 every hour you do your work. 

It’s all about working smarter and more efficiently. And at the same time, you’re helping out your team. 

To justify the financial investment, replace the time you’ve saved with doing your Brilliance/Genius work and work on your marketing, so that you have more clients and more clients means more dollars. 

If budget is an issue, start small. Focus first on tasks that will immediately make you money (stuff you’re not doing now, stuff you don’t know how to do) and set a maximum hour cap per month. Then, as revenue comes in, you can grow.

Within months of my taking the leap and doing this, outsourcing helped double my revenues in one year, and that can happen for you too.

Yes, you can too. It’s not difficult.  

If you’re not sure where to start, let’s talk. You may have known for some time that you’ve needed some help in your business, some strategic advice, some accountability and perhaps even some guidance on systems to help you delegating – and all the other things that go with running a leveraged business, let’s talk asap (for free) to explore working together. 

This kind of structure is what you likely need.