In this solo advice segment, Donna Brown argues that just as a village raises a child, a community is essential for growing a business. She explains that solo entrepreneurs often try to handle every aspect of their venture, but the myriad skills required—especially technical tasks—can cause bottlenecks and drain energy. Citing Gary Vee’s “zone of genius” concept, she urges founders to focus on what they excel at and to delegate or seek help for everything else. By building a network of experts, friends, or paid collaborators who operate in their own zones of genius, entrepreneurs can accelerate progress, reduce stress, increase happiness, and enjoy the freedom that motivated them to leave corporate life.
Chapters
There's an expression that it takes a village to raise a child, but I also think that it takes a community to grow a business. And a lot of us work by ourselves and we're solo entrepreneurs and we gave up corporate life and a more structured business to go out on our own to create something that really reflects who we are. Having said that, there are so many moving parts to a business and so many different talents that you should have or skills that you should have to really make a successful business. It's pretty difficult that we will be great at all of these things. So what quite often happens with us is that we get stuck on one part that we don't like. Like maybe we find tech difficult, so we slow down and we don't put out things as quickly as we should or we would like to, just because it's hard for us to do that. Or it takes us so long, by the time we've finished, there's no energy to do what we're actually really here to do and what we're very special at and the real thing we would like to offer to the world and to our clients. So Gary Vee says that we spend way too much time focusing on things that aren't our zone of genius. And well, he's not the only one to say this, but I really, really couldn't agree more. And that's why I think you need a community to grow your business. People who are experts, friends, anybody, especially even if you're at a startup, find people who can give you a hand. Whether they're paid or not, but as you grow, please don't waste your time on things that you're not brilliant at. Stay in your zone of genius. Do that and find everybody else who works in their zone of genius to move you forward in your business. And it's absolutely 100% sure that you will have so much more success, you'll be so much happier, a lot more relaxed, and you'll have a lot more fun, which is why you decided to go out on your own in the first place.
