As successful entrepreneurs we all come to a point where it’s time to begin enlisting the help of others and delegating tasks in order to continue growing. It’s not as easy as it sounds though. Usually we have a mountain of tasks we handle for our business. We know how to do them and do them well. Much of it is in our head and this is our business, our baby. What if someone screws it up? We have to learn to delegate effectively in order to grow. If we don’t it can become the most tedious part of running the business.

Personally, this was NOT an easy game to figure out. When I started letting go of things I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t seem to be working. It was like being sucked into a time warp. Teach someone a task and they’d make mistake after mistake. Or they’d take forever to do it. Or they’d get frustrated or bored and quit. I started thinking to myself, “Maybe I’m just not made to delegate at all!”...

While listening to the Morning X on Austin’s FM 101.5 radio station in the morning, I heard Chance Mock say something that related perfectly to the world of managing sales teams. Jason, one of the Morning X hosts, was getting Chance’s opinion on Longhorn football related topics since Chance used to be a quarterback for that team while in school at University of Texas.

The two men were comparing the Texas Longhorns to other college teams and commenting on what makes the Longhorns one of the greatest teams in college football. What Chance said was, (I’m paraphrasing) many college teams have a great eleven guys – the starting line. What makes UT so strong is that they have all great guys, so when you substitute any of the starters out, another brilliant player is going in. So many guys want to play for UT that they have a dazzling team from start to finish. Whereas other college teams have the strong eleven, then the quality fades a bit in the rest of the team....

Two big factors determine how much a business will grow. Don’t get me wrong, there are a hundred other factors to growing business and revenues, but these two lead the way in any business and any industry.

The two factors are:

• The leader’s personal growth and knowledge level

• The employees’ personal growth and knowledge levels

Your mind may already be coming up with arguments.

What about market share? Effective marketing? Supply and demand?

Margin? Surely some things are more important than personal growth?

Let’s look at an example.

Do you remember Blockbuster video? In 2004, they were the giants in their industry. They had 9000 stores, 60,000 employees, and millions of customers. Then the industry started to change, bringing Netflix and Redbox into the market. The founder of Netflix met with the CEO of Blockbuster and offered an affiliation that would serve both companies, but Blockbuster took their ball and went home.

 
Even though the CEO of...