The trap of the small business owner is, that in many cases, to grow a business to some level of success means putting your head down and working real hard doing the making it, fixing it, shipping it of the business.

Problem is, that also eventually stops you from growing. Delegation is an art, but a necessary one. Until you can unload the technical work and focus on the strategic work you will find that your business will fall into cycles of expansion and contraction eventually settling on some sort of entrepreneurial homeostasis that neither pays well of satisfies.

I don’t mean to paint such a somber picture, and after all this is a marketing blog, so what’s the point of a discussion of management strategies. One of the best things you can do in your business if you can free yourself from the technical work is to finally spend more time on strategic marketing work – in my mind some of the most productive work you can do.

In order to break free you might want to compute your strategic minimum wage – this is an hourly rate computed by taking what you would like to make in a year and dividing it by 2080 (that’s 40 hours a week x 52 weeks.) If you want to make $200,000 this year then you need to do work that is producing profit of $96 every hour. Are you?

Let go of doing everything yourself, let your business grow up a bit and get others doing for you. Can you contract for services for some work for less than $96 per hour? The tough part is that transition period. It’s harder to teach someone how to do something than it is to do it yourself. Invest the time now and it will pay dividends later – just make sure you document the procedures while you train.

I can’t find time to blog? Who has time to build relationships with journalists? I can’t seem to find time to develop referral partnerships and line up speaking engagements. Ever said any of these? All of the above are worth far more than $96 an hour. Why then can you always find time to unjam the copier and check your email.