Tips for Figuring Out Business Roles

What are the Different Roles of a Business?

Many times, what we’ll do is first identify all the things that have to be done within the business on either a high level a day to day level. Then the next step is figuring out what are the roles of a business owner. What part do they take in the work that needs to be done? Once we’ve identified what the owner must be doing, we see what items can get delegated within the company. When you have employees, you definitely want to utilize them to the best of their ability and their skill sets. 

As well as if you’re a sole proprietor, you may need to look into hiring some subcontractors to fill the role that maybe an employee would do later on down the line. But identifying all of those activities first helps you get a really good picture of everything that needs to be done. 

What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Business Owner?

Then we start looking at you as a business owner and seeing what your skills are. What’s the best value for your time? As a business owner, should you be sweeping the floors? Or is your time better spent out selling or doing management work? It’s important to figure out where the value is, especially with your skill set.

Some of the things that you’re going to start to delegate are definitely things that could be lower on the value list that are more administrative. But they are still very valuable. This could be things like social media marketing, let’s say, that can easily be delegated out to someone outside the organization. You don’t necessarily have to hire a social media person on a full time basis. You could subcontract that out to somebody else. 

Figuring Out Business Roles with Your Budget

The next key point would be to determine your budget. How much of the budget do you have available to delegate out to other people? And what things do you need to keep in house because you just don’t have the budget yet for it? You may not be able to do everything all at once or at that time. So it may be something where you’re going to identify a task or an area where you’re going to say, we can’t afford X number of dollars, but let’s bring it down and do a certain aspect within that, and then later down the line as you save you can allocate more resources to those tasks. 

A good example can be marketing dollars and what you’re doing with a social media person. Those things can be staggered or stepped up in intensity. Or you may find that you absolutely need to use all those funds now, and you might cut back on other areas. In different blogs, we talked about the different allocations and budgets. It’s key to narrow down the areas of real importance for your company to help you be profitable to have the cash flow and then, naturally, to grow. 

One of the things that many people talk about is, how do I know when I’m able to do those things? And budget is key. So identifying the budget, and then looking at your profit of the company currently. What would adding that role, contractor, or employee do for the budget? 

Reinvest in Your Business

Then look to see how much the company is willing to reinvest in order to grow that next step. This becomes a personal choice. There’s no number that you say once you hit it you can go ahead and hire somebody. It really is taking a leap of faith in your company and saying I have some extra room here, I would like to invest this going forward. Or I think this person could really add some value to my company. You can hire out for the person or hire within the company. 

If you have employees already, some employees may not be doing the things that they want to do. So you could talk to them and find out what things that they can do besides what they already are doing, or what they want to do. Are there diamonds in the rough that have other skills besides what they’re actually doing? 

Also, is there some sort of automation that can replace what somebody is currently doing? You could have that employee do something that’s more stimulating for them and adds the value that you’re looking for in tandem to reallocating responsibilities. There’s a lot of tools and a lot of applications out there that help manage a lot of different tasks within the company. 

Conclusion

So to recap, we talked about identifying the roles within the company and seeing what the owner is bringing to the table. Then figuring out who can be delegated and what those roles look like. Finally, are there any budgeting and financial things that need to be examined before deciding to move forward with some of these new avenues or new people?

We’re opening up a masterclass on the 3 Biggest Financial Mistakes New Business Owners Can Make. Let us help you figure out your business roles and sign up today.