If you read yesterday’s blog post, you’ll have read about Stage One of the Business Growth model, which is Service Mastery.

After you get to the point where you kick butt in delivering the service that you do, the next phase comes and can slap you up side the head!

Meaning — it’s in this phase where you discover that you absolutely cannot do it all.  Not that you should be doing it all, but for most of us we make this mistake.  Here’s how it goes…..

You open your business, and then realize that there is way more to success than just hanging out a shingle.  There is marketing, website design and upkeep, bookkeeping, database management, copywriting, billing and follow up with clients.  Whew!

In this stage you hit the wall. For me it was when I was up at 2am in tears as I was trying to manually type in business cards to a database.  (No, I didn’t know about CardScan and could barely figure out Excel) I was overwhelmed, and realized that it was taking me so much time just to do the ‘business’ part of the biz that I almost didn’t have enough time to do the client or revenue generating part.

So I bit the bullet, called a mentor, and said, “HELP….I have no idea how to work with an assistant or even what they could do for me, but I can’t keep going like this.”  It’s been a long journey, but today I have three assistants, and a team for my social networking, plus a graphic designer, blog guy, web guy, and loads of coaches.  And I”m a happy gal!  Let me introduce you to the next phase -

Phase Two is what I refer to as Business Mastery. Your task here is to learn how to take on the identity of a BUSINESS OWNER and not just a practitioner or whatever service you are providing.

How?  The first part is usually the awareness that what you are doing by being the crazy “I-can-do-it-all-by-myself” entrepreneur just isn’t working.

The work here is to move from being a service provider to a business owner.  Making decisions from this place is a completely different one than from that in Phase One.  The way to do that is to list the qualities of leader/business owner that you want to be.  Who can you model?  Where can you get some mentoring in this?  Without this step, you’ll forever be stuck in overwhelm  and burn out.

The first place to start is to outsource! What can you get rid of?  If you were able to peel off about four hours a week, what would you do instead that could be something that would get you more visibility of credibility.

When I work with my clients I have them follow themselves around for a week where they note how they spend their time.  After two weeks you’ll get the drift of what you are doing that is costing you time/energy/money.  Ask around for great assistants and start giving them some of the pieces that you don’t want to do, aren’t great at, or take you away from your brilliance.

The cool part?  Once you get your Business Mastery down, you will have a team who partners with you.  They can help move you forward, keep you inspired, and grow your business.  Now you are ready to move to Phase Three – Content Mastery….AKA Expert Status! Tune in tomorrow to learn more about that.