Are You an Entrepreneur? Don’t Hire Yourself!

 As an entrepreneur, you have some very specific skills and attributes that drive you and make you successful as an entrepreneur, but you shouldn't hire yourself again when you expand.

As your company grows, those same attributes and skills are not always suited to building a solid, stable company. For that, you need complementary skills, not just more of the same.

For some roles you hire, those entrepreneurial skills will be valuable to your company’s development, particularly in the technical or creative areas.

But as you fill positions to run key corporate activities in your growing company, you’ll run into trouble if you hire other entrepreneurs just like yourself.

It's human nature to surround yourself with people just like you. We generally do this in our social circles. The same thing tends to apply when hiring others. You look for characteristics and traits you're comfortable with and often mirror your own.

But as you grow and develop your company, you need staff with very specific skills, mindsets and experience to fill the key functions, which might even include anew President or CEO.

The entrepreneurial skills and knowledge you have aren't likely to translate well into some of those other roles. And if you try to do them yourself without bringing in someone else, you’ll be distracted from doing the things you need to do as an entrepreneur to develop and grow your business.

That's one of the reasons for hiring others, to handle things like logistics, sales, human resources, IT, marketing, finance, production, design etc. They can build on your entrepreneurial approach and ideas that got your company off the ground in the first place and help you build a company, not just an idea.

As an entrepreneur, you're probably not even interested in some of those fairly mundane roles within the company. This why start-ups can stumble as they grow, since the entrepreneur isn't focusing on some of the activities required to strengthen, develop and grow the company.

Hiring skilled and experienced personnel for some of the corporate roles mentioned above can also be part of the check and balance required as your company grows. Their experience can help you to put the right spin on an idea to ensure it is successful or act as the devil's advocate for some of your ideas and approaches that may seem like great ideas that could become financial or risk liabilities.

Their experience in their specific profession is what you're looking for. As long as they share your excitement and are open to challenging the status quo and developing new approaches, they can help you be even more successful. They don't have to be entrepreneurs, especially since they are willing to be an employee and work for you, but they do have to be someone who fits in your organization.

But instead of just seeking out people who aren't like yourself, hire people who will compliment you and round out your organizations skills and capabilities instead.

So, resist the temptation to hire yourself.