Marketing 101: The Real Cost of Doing Everything by Yourself

Dan: Welcome back. That marketing, Dan, video number two of the five mistakes that I wish that I knew when I first started out in marketing yesterday we talked about the dangers of trying to sell to everybody and going too broad with your message and why it's important to niche down and specifically talk to one particular audience and their pain points and their desires and their roadblocks, et cetera. Okay. If you do that, you will make sales early on a lot quicker than if you try to talk to everybody. The old saying, the takeaway from yesterday's video was to it or, uh, was if you try to talk to everybody, you're going to end up talking to nobody. Today we're going to talk about the problems of trying to do everything yourself. That's what I did when I first started out. I still have that problem today is I do everything myself because, well, I tend to do everything myself. I'm working on delegating it because the old saying is, you know, if you want it done right, you got to do it yourself. But if you are able to be disciplined and put together systems and processes that you can put together in an sop, we call it a standard occup, um, standard operating procedure and delegate it to other people, you can expect them to do better work. And ultimately you're replicating yourself. And I mentioned at the last of yesterday's video is, is you have to be able to do that, otherwise you don't own a business, you own a job. Your business depends on you being there. You simply are a glorified boss of your own time. Okay, that said, I'm, um, here with my assistant Aiden. He's not going to be on camera because again, I don't want to do the whole editing thing, all the fancy stuff. He's going to be talking and asking things here in the background. Aiden, uh, what's point number two about doing everything yourself?

Aiden: So. Hello, Dan. Our first question we're going to ask is what's the real cost of wearing too many hats in their business besides just feeling tired and being a glorified time boss?

Dan: Well, the real comes down to is, yes, at the beginning you have to wear all of the hats. That's the whole idea. When I was young in my career, um, I had somebody say to me, my manager, he said, listen, uh, he was giving me a job to do and it wasn't my job, it was never to be my job, but I had. He asked me to do it. And I asked him, okay, why do I need to know this? And he said, listen, if you ever want to be a manager, if you ever want to be the boss, you have to know how to do every single job, at least a little bit, in case in a pinch, you're required to do it. Okay? And I really internalized that. Sure, I wasn't going to be doing that job regularly, but if I wanted to be the boss, I had to understand how it works. Now, how does that apply to you and your business? You don't need to know everything there is to know about accounting. However, you do need to know enough about accounting to have a proper and educated conversation with an accountant when you do hire one. Okay? So understanding the fundamental principles of accounting will allow you to talk to them and then you delegate it so that they can do it for you. Here's a great example. Drywall. I do a little bit of construction in my free time, right? I like building things, framing, all of that stuff. Painting. Well, actually, I hate painting, but let's talk about drywall for a second. I don't know everything there is to know about drywall. I'm, uh, not very good at drywall. I can do an acceptable job. However, I know enough about how the process is done so that I can hire someone to do it for me and be able to see, okay, I'm not being taken advantage of. Uh, I know how much this costs. I know what's involved with it. Another quick example. Financial advisor. I don't know everything there is to know about finance, but I know enough about finance to have a proper conversation with my Edward Jones guy. And he appreciates me every time I come in because I'm not just some schmuck that doesn't know anything and he has to explain everything to me like I'm a child. I go in there with enough knowledge to have a proper conversation and he's like, cool, we can get a lot further ahead. So to bring this all back, to tie this into your own particular business, if you know enough about accounting, you know enough about marketing, you know enough about hiring and staffing and all of that stuff. Take that knowledge, hire someone who knows more about it than you, and work on the parts of your business that you are still excelling at. How's that for an answer, Aiden?

Aiden: So how, how do you decide which of those things that you're excelling at should stay in your day to day? It seems like you should know everything or at least enough about a, uh, little different parts of every kind of part of your business in order to speak with people. How do you decide what keeps in and what you do on a day to day.

Dan: And that's a wonderful question. And I'm not just saying that for the shtick. That is a great question. And a lot of people watching this are going to probably wonder the same thing. And honestly it's organic. Right? Uh, me m in my small business, I've been a lot of business. I run a marketing agency now because that's what I'm best at. That is what I latched onto and really, really learned about and I excel at. Okay? The reason I went that direction is because I enjoyed it. All right? Now if I had started the business and I really enjoyed encounter accounting, I would have went that way with it and hired a marketer. Right? But I don't like accounting, I don't like numbers. As I did in my yesterday's video. My math was off. I'm terrible with math. So I understood, I accepted that truth and I delegated it to somebody else and I stuck with what it was I was good at. Okay? So if you're a really good manager inside of your restaurant, then you should stay the manager as your primary job. If you're really, really good at marketing, you should do the marketing and hire a manager. Okay? The point of the matter is you can't do everything. And if you try to do everything, you're just gonna half ass all of it. Okay? Stay focused on what you're good at and delegate what you're not good at, but know enough about it to have a proper conversation.

Aiden: I'm trying to structure my next question. It's going to be targeted towards your what you're good at versus what you're not good at. And I'm thinking something along the lines of you have to learn in order to know if you're good at something or not. You don't just naturally become good at something. Maybe walking, but even walking you've got to practice. So if you are going to learn about uh, everything, should the things that you keep inside of your business and inside of your day to day life be the things that you're good at or the things that you enjoy getting better at?

Dan: Well, it goes back to what I said a moment ago. You're not going to enjoy doing something you hate and you're not going to want to do it. You're not going to get good at it. So again it just, it's pretty quick. If you don't like something, work as fast as possible to delegate it. And if you do like something, work as much as possible to master it all Right. Um, my mentor, um, years ago, taught me something very simple. The circle of focus, right? When you are focusing 100% on one thing, right? It's just one thing. In that circle, you got 100% attention. It's getting all of your love, all of your focus, boom. Level of focus or a circle of focus. Now as soon as you add a second thing into that circle, you draw a line through it. Suddenly it's 50% with this thing and 50% of another. I see people do it on social media all the time. I need a Facebook, I need an Instagram, I need a TikTok, I need a Threads, I need all of these things and uh, all of these audiences. But guess what? The general population, they're on certain spots. What, where does your audience hang out? Right? Some, some people's businesses, they might be on Facebook. Some people, they might be on threads. Some people, they might be on Instagram or TikTok. Why would you divide all of your attention between those four platforms so that you half ass 20, uh, four, uh, different things, actually you're 25%, four different things. Whereas my audience, my personal audience is a lot of them are on Facebook. I focus my attention on Facebook, I give it 100% of my attention. That's where I run ads, it's where I get clients from. Because my clients are small service based business owners and a lot of them are in their 40s, 50s, right? Late 30s, and guess what? They still hang out on Facebook. Right? If you're selling, uh, a completely different offer like Etsy or something to stay at home moms, then your audience might be on TikTok. But you don't need Facebook if your audience is on TikTok. Right? That's the point. Focus on one thing, master it's, and then you can introduce other avenues.

Aiden: So if someone's short on both cash and on, um, knowledge while they're trying to master a skill, what would be the most important first thing you'd tell them to get off their plate and delegate.

Dan: So if you're short on cash, you're short on skill, you need to learn marketing. It's as simple as that. You need to learn the marketing aspect. Marketing and sales are, uh, what make the world go round, okay? Learn that as quick as possible, as efficiently as possible, get some sales, and then you can start delegating stuff. I suggest you constantly learn marketing. Constantly. The fact you're watching this right now, if you're hearing these words, all six of you, uh, because you don't have a whole lot of subscribers. But the people that are watching this are paying attention, and you're willing to learn. Continue to always learn. Even if you don't like marketing and sales, you need to learn it. Because at the end of the day, everything is a sale. It's not just financial transactions. Me telling you that sales is important is me selling you on the concept. Think about that for a second. You getting your kids to go to bed at 9 o' clock for their bedtime at night is a sale. You're convincing them why it's a good idea, why it's in their best interest to go to bed at 9 o'. Clock. Nobody wants to be told what to do. They want to be inspired on what to do. Uh, all right. You can't make anybody do anything. You could only make them want to do something, right? So if your kid's bedtime, hey, go to bed. Otherwise you're grounded. They're not going to respond very well to that. However, hey, go to bed. You've got a big day tomorrow. Oh, I do have a big day tomorrow. I got a baseball game tomorrow at noon. You need to be well rested for that baseball game. Suddenly that kid starts thinking, wow, yeah, that is in my best interest to go to bed now. I want to go to bed. Uh, I'm not being told to go to bed. That's sales in a nutshell. Learn that above everything else, and the rest of your business will fall into place over enough time.

Aiden: Can you recall a time where you personally lost out on, uh, an opportunity or opportunities because you were too busy trying to do everything yourself before you knew that.

Dan: You should delegate, Man, I'm probably missing out right now. Like, I, I haven't delegated, uh, this, uh, marketing to have somebody else to do it for me. And I'm probably missing out on opportunities as we speak. I could be spending time elsewhere, but I'm here talking about something I'm passionate about, right? But I love this stuff, so this isn't a waste of time for me. But there is an opportunity cost to everything you decide to do with your time. Okay? This is important to me because I'm passionate about it. And if you're listening, I want you to learn from it, so it's not a waste of time. However, there are other opportunities. I could be missing out on money right now, and I'm not getting rich from YouTube, that's for sure. So that's it, everybody. Uh, this video has come to about 10 minutes itself. Maybe 12 minutes, give or take.

Aiden: It doesn't matter how Long. It's come to finish this last sentence.

Dan: Oh, you got something else for you're

Aiden: not overwhelmed because business is challenging. You're overwhelmed because blink.

Dan: You're not overwhelmed because business is challenging. You're overwhelmed because you're doing too much at once. The more you're able to focus on the parts of your business that move the needle, the more traction you're going to get. And as with interest on a bank account, compounding effort will pay off. It doesn't feel like much to the hockey stick, the whole hockey stick thing, you know, it goes like this for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. Here's a story. Um, when I first started out, I'm an ex professional BMX bike rider. Right When I first started out riding bikes, the first two, three, four years, I was really, really bad. I crashed a lot. I had this, I didn't know how to fall. So when I fell, I got hurt. And it took me a while to get back to it. But then around the 18 to 24 month mark, I suddenly, I had this epiphany and I learned how to fall and I, after that, my, my gradual for 18 or 6 months, 12 months, uh, 18, 24 months, it was like this. And then also I learned how to fall and it skyrocketed because my learning curve adjust. But the problem is, and with every entrepreneur is they only work at something for 12 months, 18 months, and they stop. They're like, this isn't working. I, I, I, I, I'm terrible at this. I'm not getting any better. It's not working. And they stop before they hit that learning curve hockey stick spike. All right, if you stick with something long enough because think about it, I went on, um, to become a professional bike rider. If I had given up at the 18 month mark, I would have never hit that hockey stick. I would have never hit that learning curve. And who knows where I'd be now. And a lot of entrepreneurs, especially 20 somethings, that are first starting out, they're guilty of their, they give up, um, before they reach that learning curve spike. And they never will know what could have been. Use Mr. Beast, for example. He stayed consistent. He's the biggest YouTube person on the planet. He's from my hometown. I watched his come up. If he had stopped after 18 months and said, oh, I've only got 2, 600 subscribers. This isn't worth it, it's not growing. He hit a hockey stick moment and learned how it all worked. And now he's got like 430 million subscribers. Stick with it long enough, especially if you enjoy it.