People often associate meanings with words that are in the general vicinity of the correct definition of the word, but not quite the accurate meaning. For that reason, I find it helpful to keep a dictionary handy. The dictionary can provide clarity that is useful to you. Take the word ‘entrepreneur.’ What does it mean to you? How are you defining it? Let me give you the dictionary’s definition, which is the one that counts.

Entrepreneur; A person who organises and manages any enterprise, especially business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

This is a definition that is useful to you. It reminds you what you should be doing every day. An entrepreneur is an organiser of people and resources. That’s what should be going on in your practice. You at the top, organising and orchestrating the success of your business.

Note the definition does NOT mention anything about the entrepreneur being the one who is the doer of all things. The person whose job description is ‘everything.’ The only one who can fix something when it goes tits up. The person who knows if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. The person who doesn’t trust anyone else to do something because they won’t do it as well as him. These are NOT the definition of an entrepreneur, even though a lot of practice owners act like it is.

Your primary responsibility as an entrepreneur is to organise the resources you have effectively. This is also your greatest opportunity. Here’s a list of what I consider your greatest resources:

1. Your mind and your mindset. Invest in making yourself better, sharper, more skillful and knowledgeable. Your own resourcefulness is your greatest resource.
2. Your time. We all get the same number of hours in a day. You decide how to invest those hours.
3. Your people. How much you get out of your team depends on how good you are at organising them. Do they know the vision for your practice? Have you empowered them with your practice’s core values so they know how to think and act in any situation? Have you given them effective processes to follow and positively influenced them so they actually want to follow the processes? Have you organised it so all your people have their noses pointed in the same direction? You get it done through retreat days, weekly team meetings, daily huddles and one-to-ones.
4. Your tribe. Your list of clients is another one of your most valuable resources. The smart entrepreneur will not neglect his tribe. It is a profitable and wise investment of your time and money to write to your tribe every month with a newsletter, give them specific offers, throw events for them and so on. Communicate with your tribe.

This is the most important work of an entrepreneur. I can guarantee there is a lot of crap that you do every week that you shouldn’t be doing. I’m pretty good at this, but still, even I am constantly trying to remove myself from more and more of the grunt work so that I can focus on the highest value use of my time.

You need to have an ever-expanding ‘Not-allowed-to-do’ list. A list of all the things that you are not allowed to do. This does two things. It frees you up to do the things I listed above 1-4. And second, it lets your team know that if something is on your not allowed to do list, you will never be doing it again and you are now relying on them to get it done every day. They need to own it. This will grow your team and their abilities. There is an extremely high cost to you messing around doing lower-value work and sacrificing the real work you need to do. My job here is to remind you of that!