I just listened to a podcast from Entrepreneur of Fire with John Dumas Interviewing Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Content Marketing World.  The podcast focus was on how Joe Pulizzi’s spends all of his time on creating and marketing content.  The real takeaway from the podcast was set goals and build a team so you can focus on what you love to do.  This will make you successful.

You can’t just build a team by outsourcing parts of your business and then just do what you like to do.  This would be abdicating rather than delegating as it is defined in the E-myth.  You first have to set goals, and then break those goals down into actions items that you can manage.  You outsource these action items to achieve success.  For those action items to put you on the path to reach your goals, you have to have a plan.  You need benchmarks to follow.

Both Joe Pulizzi and John Dumas talk about how they did not build a successful team until they had goals.  These goals were written down, with deadlines and a method of measuring the success.  Then when they knew what action items were needed, they hired staff or outsourced.  Just building a team so you can do what you want will not produce success.  You have to first have a plan before you hire or outsource.

My company offers outsourced bookkeeping and accounting services.  A lot of others offer the same thing.  Their pitch is always, let us keep the books and you focus on your business.  If you don’t know the numbers in your business, you don’t have a business.  My focus is on learning what numbers you need for your business and then coming up with a plan to gather the information.  See one of my previous blog post.

I would love to have some feedback about team building in your business, both successes and failures.