In this episode, we discuss the importance of asking for help and not doing everything on your own.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how self-sufficiency is the road to poverty. One of the quickest ways to go broke is to think that you can do everything on your own. The reason this is the case is that there are too many things to know and not enough hours in the day to learn everything.
This is why you should specialize in your craft and learn how to delegate the stuff outside your expertise to someone that really knows what they are doing. Right now I’m starting my own financial planning company and I’m creating my own marketing plan, updating my own website, doing my own compliance, finding clients, doing my own bookkeeping, and my own financial planning.
Right now I’m building up my client base so I have more time than clients but there will come a point where I will have more clients than I have time available. At this point, I will need to start hiring other folks to do the stuff that I’m level 4 at.
If I tried to do everything, I might miss something with my compliance or with my book and that can cause a lot of damage down the road.
Plus is I focus on the other things outside or financial planning and development-coaching, then I’m not going to maximize my value as a person. Financial planning pays me a lot more than updating my compliance reports but the compliance is going to keep me out of jail.
So when I get the chance, I’m going to hire someone to do that work for me along with other administrative tasks that don’t produce much revenue for me.
If I only focused on the administrative tasks and spent no time generating business, then I’m going to go out of business and then I won’t be able to help folks with their financial planning needs.
As people, we have to understand that there is an opportunity cost for doing something. One hour doing administrative tasks means one hour where I can’t generate business. We are all starting off with different resources and skill levels, so in the beginning, it is going to be a juggling act.
Even if you work for somebody else, the same thing applies to you. If you spent all your time focused on the administrative tasks and not the big projects that will make a difference in the company, you’re just going to feel overworked and wonder where all your time went.
If somebody can do something for you at work, give it to them so you can focus on your big-ticket items.
If you’re starting your own business or at work, ask someone for help. I know if I didn’t receive help on how to become a better financial planner, I would have failed a long time again. Asking for help can save you a lot of time and money, and if you’re starting a new job or business, that can be very valuable to you.
We don’t start off by knowing everything and we just benefit from somebody else’s wisdom. So don’t be ashamed of asking for help. I’m not and you shouldn’t either.
In this economy, it really requires you to be a specialist in your field and to become an expert level specialist, you need put in your 10,000 hours. So obviously you can’t be a master in too many fields because there are only 8,760 in a calendar year and you spend a third of that sleeping, another 12.5% working on yourself, so you don’t have that much time in a year to focus on everything.
So specialize in one year by finding your niche and make sure that you don’t get distracted by the un-essential stuff. Do this and you will live a great life.
If you specialize in something, you can save yourself a lot of time. For me, when I first started out doing financial plans, I think the first one that I did took me all day, but after four years, I could finish one in a couple of hours and it was much better because I was able to identify more shortfalls than when I first started out.
So newer clients were able to get a much better experience. Sorry to all the clients that first signed up for my services, I gave you a plan that was suitable but my process improved.
If I never really specialized in financial planning, then I would still take eight hours to do a financial plan and that’s not a good use of my time. I would really go into the poor house. So my goal is to figure out how to maximize my value so I don’t spend all day on something and still provide a living for myself. So that comes from working on things that produce a lot of volume or value at a large volume.
If I do this, then I’ll be fine and it also means that I’m not trying to do everything for everyone. So think about your schedule and ask yourself if you’re specializing or you’re being a master of everything. I’m assuming that your lifestyle will reflect the decision that you made.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, remember that self-sufficiency is the road to poverty. So learn to delegate the value tasks for yourself and specialize in the areas that bring you a lot of value. Do this and you’ll be on the right track in life.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
