Jack of All Trades... Expanding your skillset

By Isaiah O’Connor
A 4 MINUTE READ

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned that as you build up your business you will find yourself wearing many hats. This is especially true of bootstrappers. When you are trying to build up your business with little to no capital you will find yourself wearing all the hats. You will be the head of, marketing, sales, accounting, supply chain, etc.

The problem is when you are a Jack of all trades, as the phrase goes you are a master of none. You will not likely be able to gain complete mastery of every aspect of the business. If you are a bit of a perfectionist, (as I am) this may drive you a bit crazy. However, the good news is you really do not need to be a complete mastery of these to run your business. You just need the ability to become good enough to get your business off the ground. Once you are up and running you can begin to start to hire professionals in these fields to take over and bring it to the next level.

So how do you learn the skill you need to run your business? First, you need to identify what skills you need for your business to run. It is far easier to do this before you start, but if you do not, or you miss one that you did not expect than you will have to learn on the fly.

Some of the more important skills but often overlooked skills that an entrepreneur needs in business are accounting, marketing (including social media and internet marketing). Then you may find some more “required secondary power” type of skills. These are skills that may support your product or service directly but not visibility. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, I work with balloons. When I first started doing the decor portion, I found myself having to figure out how to take decent pictures, and then watermark them and edit them to form my portfolio. These are skills I had minimal experience with but have had to develop over the years to grow my business.

“The biggest thing to remember is that you do not need to reach a professional level of expertise in these things.”

— Isaiah O'Connor

Okay, now you have identified an area you need to develop a skill in, now what. The obvious first choice is to Google the topic to try to find some tutorials and videos explaining how to do it. This is a great first step, and depending on the complexity of the skill set may be enough. For example, learning how to watermark a photo does not take very long, and it is easily explained in a short YouTube video.

Some things are a bit more complex and may require you reach out to someone that has experience. You may find web forums and Facebook Groups to be a helpful resource on these things.

Then there are support phone numbers to call for some products and services, that you need to use and figure out. For example, you can call the tax office to make sure you are filing your taxes correctly.

Lastly, you can and should take courses on things that are vital to the survival of your business. Take accounting as a good example. I talked to a man who told me “I had my own company and I was my own accountant, and now I don’t have my own company” Sadly this is often the case. Many, if not most entrepreneurs are “idea” guys not so much “nuts and bolts” guys. Accounts can be expensive so taking a course to learn how to do it correctly is well worth the time.

Sometimes you can find free courses offered by your local community in doing things like accounting and getting the right legal papers set up, or you can find a low-cost course at your community college, take a webinar or of course, hire a business coach to help you get set up.

The biggest thing to remember is that you do not need to reach a professional level of expertise in these things. The goal as a bootstrapper is to do them well enough that your business does not fail, and then as your business grows, hire the experts to take over. As you hire experts you will find your stress level going down and your reach expanding as they know the tricks that can take you to the next level.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Entrepreneur

Isaiah O’Connor.

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