Stay in Your Bubble, And Let Go of The Reins

I’ve been witnessing a trend among great business owners that are so deep into their business that needs to be called out. You can’t be the expert in every decision of your business. 

Just marinate on that a bit.

Owners often are their greatest and worst roadblocks to growth, development, and leadership. I’ve witnessed so many times over the years, that when they get into the weeds on the smallest of tasks or tasks that they don’t need to spend their time on, they just end up muddying the waters and make it damn near complicated for their teams to do their best work. At the same time, they are exhausting themselves because they are not able to let go of the reigns and trust and empower their teams to do what they were hired (or subcontracted) them to do.

Need a more specific example?

When an owner hires, let’s say a web team, to build for them a new website to enhance their online reputation, the owner has to be able to stay in their bubble. What bubble? The bubble of their expertise. The expertise that has built an incredible business. The passion that has fostered every element of where that business is today, and the knowledge of their industry that surpasses others.

Owners, your web team wants you to stay in that bubble so that they can work with you to extract that awesomeness and translate the knowledge into a tool that works for you. Let your web team interview you and extract from you the key elements of your business and how you want your customers to react, interact, and invest in your business. Answer all of their questions, regardless of how silly or irrelevant you may think they are. Give them everything they ask for. And then … let go of the reigns. Let them do their job, their craft, their expertise. Trust the decisions and pathways they take you on, even if they feel uncomfortable. Chances are they feel uncomfortable because it’s ‘new’ to you. Let go of the fear, empower the trust, be a guiding leader to ensure they stay on brand, and keep your voice and passion alive.

Of course, there’s a balance here. You have to be sure you’ve selected the best vendor for the job. There has to be trust there because you’re handing them your baby. It’s like taking your kid to school for the very first time. It’s scary to release your precious cargo into the hands of someone else to nurture and develop. Will they take care of my child? Will my child be safe? Will they pay close attention to my childs needs?

This is where I love to help owners. Picking the best vendor, and being the liaison between owner and vendor to ensure both bubbles create the best product possible. But this does come with its challenges. Owners AND vendors have to trust me. Trust that I have a proven track record of taking an intangible idea and translating that to the teams who turn that idea into a real living and breathing tool to help the business grow. To ensure you’re investing and delivering the best tools to your customers to help grow your business, decisions have to be based on evidence, data, and the understanding of how consumers behave. After all, marketing dollar’s true intention is to take care of and attract new customers. And those customers often are not the same customers from when you first started your business.

I want to leave with you with a few questions to think about this week.

1. How well do you trust your marketing partners and production vendors? Are you micromanaging and implementing personal opinions versus true evidence and business-case decision making? Could you improve the project outcomes if you took a step back and let the experts do what you’re paying them to do?
2. How well do you know your customers? Besides the one-to-one spot conversations. Have you ever looked at your customers in a database and segmented characteristics such as: spend averages, visit frequency, demographic information such as gender and age, geography, referral sources, etc. You may be surprised by what you find.

Until next week!