When we do not dedicate ourselves fully to the activity we know how to do, we lose focus, we tend to put out fires and worst of all: we can fall into situations where we stop creating business. It is not normal, but it is a risk that we want to implement and grow a business when there are areas that we do not know how to manage. So how or with whom do we lean to stand out from the competition?
I remember when I started my first business almost 20 years ago I was full of motivation because I had a dream that I longed for a long time ago, a lot of energy and the desire to eat the world. Back then I had only my idea and a very good verb, so it was relatively easy for me to sell my idea to an investor who supported me by financing the start of operations.
A few months after I opened my company I started to have my first very good sales and in less than 8 months I had sold a million dollars. Yes, a million dollars !!! Fantastic right? Well yes and no.
The learning
That stage of my life was a great learning experience since I realized that to be a successful professional it is not enough just to sell but you have to know where you are going, have a plan and a very clear vision of what you want.
As I sold a lot, the operation of my business exceeded my capacity very quickly at all levels. I tried to do everything at the same time, I was even proud to be a multi-tasker or multitasker. But this feeling of strength very soon disappeared because my head was in a thousand things at once and I only had time to put out fires halfway.. It was when I decided to hire people to help me, both administratively and in sales, but what I did was give myself more work since the people I hired were not the right ones. For example, I believed that I had to have sellers who were charismatic, gifted and energetic, and what happened with these types of sellers were very good at bringing new sales, but they lacked planning like I did and the problem became even bigger.
Perhaps to some of you my experience may be familiar in some way. As I said, my learning from that stage was that if I did not know where I wanted to go and did not have a plan and the time necessary to plan, I could hardly convey to others what I wanted and even more complex would be to have a true team with which to grow to success.
The lonely wolf
For a long time before coming to this reflection I felt like a lone wolf, like a misunderstood manager and that no one valued my work since everyone came to me to solve their problems but nobody supported me to solve mine. The truth was that I myself did not know how to value what was really important: to have a clear objective and to plan and create a strategy based on priorities.
Nowadays I realize that if I had had the experience of knowing how to plan strategically, another rooster would have crowed.
Expert support
Now, I was also able to seek the support of a professional who was an expert in goal achievement and planning to help me create and implement a well-structured and well-defined action plan.
But back then I wasn't comfortable thinking about bringing a stranger into my company to tell me what to do. What a magnificent truth! But the truth is that my approach and feeling was wrong since what I needed was a professional who would help me for a limited time to create that structure that I needed because I did not have the knowledge or time to implement.
For many years this type of high-level professional help was only available to large companies, fortunately this has changed.
Many companies, especially independent entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized companies, usually require high-level personnel for a certain time, in order to carry out specific tasks such as development of the commercial area, financial planning, review of administrative processes or analysis of the business strategy. growth and investment in technology.
To meet these types of needs, an excellent option is to look for what is called Interim Management, offered by highly qualified specialized professionals in each subject and the required managerial profiles.
As businessmen we are used to, for example, hiring a designer to make a website for us or an accountant to take our finances, but why not apply the same concept that large companies have used for a long time, which is to subcontract specific tasks at the level of management or resources. humans.
Interim management a great solution
The idea is to use the figure of interim management, so that suitable people with many years of experience in business management are in charge of developing shortcomings and processes for a company for a limited time. In this way, managers can fully dedicate themselves to the activity they know how to do and thus create business.
Consequently, the advantages of this type of subcontracting are numerous. Among them is reducing costs by up to 90%, an aspect that can be very useful for the growth of new companies or companies in the process of refloating.
