So you figure you’re an entrepreneur. You have an idea. So you start building it out. Great! But then there’s all these other people doing all these other things. And you know you can do them better. So... what do you do This is Clickstarter, I’m Dante St James. This is episode 46… Stay in your own lane. It’s tempting when you start up a new business, to try and cover everything. After all, you need the money. So if you’re a plumber, you might try your hand at tiling, bricklaying, painting or even gardening if it helps pay the bills. After all, new business is hard! It doesn’t work from Day 1, and often takes years to stabilise. The danger of staying this way for too long is that you risk swimming outside your lane and being no good at any of the things you’re doing. Especially if you are a sole trader doing it all yourself. You might have a certificate. You might have a bit of expertise and experience. But if you’re spending sixty percent of your time being a tiler, you’re not gonna be much of a plumber after a while. There is a particular kind of business owner who does suit the idea of swimming outside their lane and mixing it with the training squad instead of splashing about with the kids and their kickboards. That’s the entrepreneur. In fact, it’s almost a mandatory sign of being an entrepreneur to diversify their portfolio of skills and try new stuff all the time. Or even throw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. That’s because the entrepreneur isn’t necessarily doing the work themselves. They do all the hustling, the selling, the research, the travel, the organising of offshore staff and the high level work of workflow and systems to manage everything at a peak efficiency. But they aren’t doing the plumbing and tiling themselves. They’re back in the office sending the plumbers and tilers out to work and looking for a way to get more plumbing and tiling done for less cost without reducing their prices. But, let’s say you’re not that entrepreneur. You’re more the sole trader plumber barely paying their bills. Or you’re just making enough from doing bookkeeping and admin work from home to cover the rent and power. Should you suddenly start doing tiling or picking up some babysitting jobs to get some extra coin? Well… maybe. But that extra stuff shouldn’t eat in to your core work. It becomes your side-gig. Or to continue with the swimming analogy, you’re hopping out of the pool and heading in to the gym. As someone who is side-gigging for a consulting firm, Google and Facebook right now, let me tell you it’s hard. Really hard. Because all the things I do, from running a digital agency, to being a digital business advisor , itinerant social media trainer and search engine marketing consultant, are related. Really closely related. So jumping from one gig to the other often doesn’t feel like you’re doing that at all. You’re just switching focus from one task to another, but where each task has a different boss attached to it. But I have it relatively easy compared to someone who is working full time at a job, and then coming home to do something completely unrelated to their core work. Or where you are doing that whole plumber by day, tiler by night thing. You’re not quite sure whether you’re a plumber, a tiler, or some abomination of a hybrid of both. This is why I tend to advise that those who are starting to gain some real momentum, stick to their lane. Stick to their plan. Stick to what is working. If you recall my previous words on how long small business can take to settle down, you’d know that you can’t expect everything to work straight away. And you can’t simply change direction based on a month of working at it. So, if you’ve got enough cash to last until things can start working right, stick to the plan. But if you’re a year in, and things aren’t even beginning to get anywhere near moving, then it might be time to see a business advisor and see if there’s something else at play that’s ...