When Pride gets in the way of Growth
For many of us entrepreneurs, being successful means being independent of others and being capable of getting the job done when the rest can’t due to lack of skill, or won’t due to laziness. This ability to “get on with it” often creates somewhat of an over confidence in our range and depth of skills, the “Dunning Kruger” effect as it’s known in psychology.
An attitude of this nature is, however, almost essential in small start-up businesses that have to fight against the odds just to survive the launch phase let alone their first few years of operation. If the entrepreneur doesn’t believe with every fibre of his or her being that they will make it work then they are doomed from the start.
Very often in small businesses, the perceived “non-essential” elements and functions within the organization such as the branding and marketing are either completely neglected or, possibly worse, are attempted by the owner who, armed with buoyant self-confidence firmly believes that no outside help is necessary and being the highly capable person that they are, will save the business thousands in hard fought profits by keeping it all inhouse.
Besides the skill required to create high impact creative elements for a business, time is not something most SME owners have in abundance. I can truly speak from direct experience in that regard, having spent a decade as a professional photographer, I seldom managed to find the time nor energy to take photos for my own businesses, yet because I knew I had the necessary skill I refused to hire in any one to complete the task for me. In the end it was the businesses that suffered.
Looking through other SME’s online presence now, I can see just how often this scenario is played out. Most SME’s have an Instagram page, Facebook page and website, with all content being created by the owner, or their offspring or a “fresh out of school” nephew who has decided to start an online marketing business or be a web designer… for this month anyway.
The content created is often boring and repetitive, websites are poorly designed, contain overly emotional copy that no one will ever read and don’t deliver the message that the brands need it to. Social pages and websites like that achieve nothing for the business and in fact the business would probably be better off without them.
Scanning through the many small businesses that have grown into national brands, one thing is blatantly obvious. Someone highly skilled and specialized was brought in at some point to create a world class brand that is scalable and marketable to a far wider and more sophisticated audience.
In those cases, the owners have been able to recognise exactly where their own strengths start and end and have been able to subdue their own egos and get the right people in to do what they either aren’t capable of or simply don’t have the time and energy to do. Those businesses are now reaping the rewards of owners who placed the business’s interests ahead of their own pride.