Which hats should you be wearing?
It’s not uncommon to hear entrepreneurs describe their jobs by saying they get to wear lots of hats. What does that mean? Are you just wearing the hats you want to? Are you missing some hats?
I come from a development and product background. I knew that I wasn’t good at business, but didn’t have a good way to explain why, or a way to improve. I learned the following framework from my co-founder Willis. It has improved my understanding of business, and given me the tools to identify where my own business knowledge is falling short.
The 6 functional areas of business
These 6 areas are the minimum that a business needs to operate. Here’s a quick overview of what each one covers.
Sales
Finding, making and closing deals. Discovering the needs of your customers and defining what you can do for them.
Marketing
Getting your company into the minds of your customers. Positioning your brand against your competitors. To some extent, sourcing prospects for sales.
Operations
Delivering things to your customers. The actual execution of whatever it is that you do. Make sure it gets done, on time, to the level of quality that is acceptable to your customer.
Product
What you are delivering to your customers, and how you are providing them value. We get pretty deep about product.
Finance
Money comes and money goes. You’ve got to keep track of it. Not only does it keep the tax man happy, you will always know what your runway is.
General & Administration
Everything else to keep the business running. This includes, business formation, HR stuff (hiring, benefits, etc), vision, culture and even high level strategy
How to cover them all
Look, I get it. You’re being pulled in a lot of different directions. It’s easy for stuff to fall through the cracks. There’s a lot of things in your business you just don’t want to do.
You need to be doing all of these in your business. I want to give you some strategies we’ve used to cover them all.
Roles
You wanted to wear lots of hats right? Be intentional about what role you’re in at any given time. Are you CMO today? Are you CPO? Are you avoiding tasks in a certain area? Is there a hat you haven’t worn in a while?
Categorize tasks
Take all the tasks you’ve documented, and put them into one of the 6 areas. If you notice that you don’t have many tasks in a certain area, take a closer look. Is there something you should be doing that you’re not?
Add more people
Just assign each responsibility to a single person. Then make sure to hold them accountable to their role. If you don’t have the resources for full time people, be creative.
I know several accountants that are seeking to be part time startup CFOs. Get your friend who’s starting a small marketing agency to manage your marketing. Just pick people you can hold accountable.
Advisors
As an entrepreneur, I know, that you know, that the buck stops with you. Your business is your responsibility.
If you don’t have much experience in any of the above areas, you can still be responsible for them. You can even learn the basics on your own, but get advisors to fill in the blanks for you. Hell, get advisors for the things you’re already good at. Advisors are great. It’s the coolest thing when you find someone that understands something you don’t, and then they explain it to you.
Breaking the rules
Let’s not let perfect get in the way of good. When you’re just getting your business off the ground, you can decide whether it’s right for your business to give one of these areas a little less attention.
Sales in a B2C company
Sales involves a lot of one-on-one interaction. B2C companies usually have low price points, if any price at all. Selling to consumers early in your business probably won’t have great returns. However, you should still spend a lot of one-on-one time with your customers. Just focus on learning about their needs, and feed the learning back into product.
The drawback here is that you’re going to be playing catch up later. Your sales in a B2C company may be to a whole other audience, and you’ll have to start learning about them when you start sales. You can always do some pre-sales. Find out what kind of advertising or sponsorship or other creative revenue generating thing you can sell, and who you can sell it to.
Marketing in a B2B company
When your company is small, you can often run the business off of sales you hustle for. It’s ok if you’re not immediately worried about inbound leads from the start. Putting that energy into product instead is going to give you better marketing insights when you’re ready to market. You’ll find out more about who your audience should be, and what product marketing will resonate with them.
However, audience and brand building can take a long time. The sooner you get started building a place for yourself in the mind if your customer, the better.
These are really the only two areas I’d recommend leaving out, and only in a bootstrapped startup that is too small to give attention to all functional areas.
Wrapping up
This is the framework that we have used in our own business. It’s helped us head off problems before they occur, or at least describe what went wrong. I hope it helps you see something you were missing, and helps you ride that gravy train to unicorn town.
The author has licensed this article under CC BY