38 of 100 Hire People That Are Better Than You

I like being the least qualified, least skilled, most incompetent person in the room. It means I'm surrounded by brilliance. A lot of people get intimidated by that. Not me. I'm all for it.

I have two options for running my business. I can be the do all - end all. That will keep me busy. I can find others to do the work for me. I'm pretty sharp and that's gotten my business to where we are today. I've heard people say, "No one can do things as well as I can." That's often the case with us business owners. You have the passion, the drive, the suicide work ethic and desire to make it happen under the worse of circumstances. It's tough to find others to fit into this model.

I'm at a stage in my life and business where I'm looking to simplify. I'm also looking to scale my business so it runs without me. What I find is often the case is I'm the bottleneck. Others on my team want to do something, but they are waiting on me. My to do list is big. Theirs is not.

My top priority no0w is to leverage what I do best. What is that? As good as I am technically, and I have had to be to get my online marketing business to where is at, I'm much better at selling, building relationship and growing our customer base. Not only that, it's what I enjoy doing most. I get much more excitement out of visiting with clients, getting on the phone calls and working my sales pipeline than I ever get doing my tech work. This is coming from a guy with Masters Degree in Computer Science.

I really enjoy teaching. I've started doing client work with another team member on a screen share. As I am implementing a client solution, I'm teaching someone else how to do it. They then go on to finish it up without me. The teaching itself is what motivates me to get something done.

Finally, I like experimenting. I like trying out new things. It's our business' R&D work. Doing that same thing a second time is OK. Doing it a third, fourth and fifth time for me is mind numbing.

This all is a good match for running my business long term. I focus on bringing in the business. I focus on teaching my team how we do things. I taking on the work needed to come up with our future cool solutions. I get other team members to do the rest.

I have Danica on my team that's been with me coming up on five years. There are things she does that I no longer understand. I don't want to. She does it so much better than I do anyway. I've never been a graphic designer. Anson on my team can run circles around me there. What would I do without these people? I'd be a solo-preneur again, working so much harder making less money than I'm making now. (Not something I want.)

So I'm very happy NOT being the smartest person in the room.

Note to self: Figure out a way to get fired.