Recently I was having a discussion with a CPA that was a few years into building their practice, and doing quite well actually. We were discussing their lines of business, and where they intended to go from there. An interesting topic came up. That topic was whether or not they should build a bookkeeping business. What made it interesting was that the question wasn’t whether it would be profitable or not... it surely would be. The question was whether or not it was a worthy endeavor for a CPA. That made me think of the topic for this blog.
When building my recruiting business years ago, I realized that there were some jobs we could take on that would be ‘fun’ to do, but not necessarily as profitable. In fact, they could be quite time-consuming. However, there were other jobs we could handle that would be more routine, but be reasonably profitable, not take as much time, and be more repeatable as well. Those jobs weren’t as glamorous, but they created a more dependable income stream and were much easier to use to scale the company because it was easier to delegate the work. I decided to focus on attaining more of the latter work for exactly those reasons, as opposed to the more ‘fun’ work that wasn’t necessarily the best business decision long-term.
No matter what industry you are in, you are likely to find the same thing happening in your company as you build your business. There will be exciting jobs that come your way, but that aren’t necessarily the best business decision for the success of your company. There will also be more mundane engagements that present themselves that may not be as glamorous to work on, but that will more dependably pay the bills. This is where you have a choice to make as a business owner.
There is nothing wrong with choosing the more glamorous, time-consuming, and reasonably profitable work. In fact, many business owners choose that route because they enjoy the work itself. They sacrifice scalability and growth in order to spend their own personal time doing the activities that they most enjoy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach. It is merely a life choice.
However, if you want to build a scalable business where you are able to delegate more tasks and therefore handle more business, you likely will need to put your ego aside and accept the less glamorous jobs in order to build a more dependable revenue stream. It may feel like you are somehow degrading your worth by accepting lower-level engagements, but the truth is you are building a business. Once you start to achieve success in your business-building efforts, you will either find that you are much more respected than you thought, or find that you simply don’t care as much at that point because the business success was all you really wanted in the first place. :)
I hope this discussion has been helpful. I wish you success in the continued growth of your business.
Mark Goldman
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