A small business owner today faces challenges unknown in earlier days. There is no longer competition from other businesses within the same geographic area. The business must now compete with the rest of the world. It is not enough to do everything yourself and do a little marketing from time to time.

That was the remnant of the business model of the old days of shopkeepers. In today’s world, a business owner must focus all of his or her energies on growing the business, both its financial health and sales. In your grandparents’ time, people made their own soap. Yes, they were being thrifty and doing essential tasks, but today we don’t have time or energy, it’s better to just buy the soap. Doing your own payroll every week or two is a task that adds nothing to the growth of your business. It’s a chore, not unlike landscaping, cleaning, or machine maintenance. These are all the things that you could do it yourself but the question is, should your?

One important difference is the sensitivity of the information involved. But how often do you run into trouble when pay rates are leaked, or you want to give a raise but don’t want the payroll clerk to know? About 28% of you end up doing the payroll yourself. That’s not being productive with your time. You also want it done right, so you do it yourself. This is not the way to grow, doing everything yourself.

The task of paying employees and paying taxes is not add any value what your customer buys from you, or the experience your customer has dealing with your company! Small businesses become great businesses when the owner learns to delegate, when he starts working on his business, not his business, when he hires talented people to do specialized tasks for him.

He (I say “he” because 78% of business owners are men, although I think this is changing fast) works on how the business delivers something valuable to the customer, works on the marketing message that the world sees, works on the systems that make the business work in the eyes of its customers.

The growing business owner doesn’t spend their time on mundane tasks that customers don’t care about. His client couldn’t care less if he spends a couple of hours every Friday doing his own payroll. Look, he just gets the facts about the different ways to get the job done in the least amount of time.

I believe that small business is the backbone of our great nation. It is the people and their energy that make our economy work, although they do not receive any attention. It’s where all the growth comes from, it’s where the action is, it’s where the work gets done, but don’t try to do it all yourself.