Give up control to grow your business, says entrepreneur and author

Starting a business is relatively easy, but growing a business is hard, says Scott Fritz, an entrepreneur, investor and the author of The 40 Hour Work Year, which attempts to show business owners how to get out of the day-to-day grind of running a business and transition into being a passive investor in the business. Fritz is in Baton Rouge today participating in Entrepreneur Organizations’ Accelerator Program Preview, part of Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week. “Most entrepreneurs are control freaks,” he says. “You’ve got to know when to let go of that control.” Fritz says many entrepreneurs have trouble trusting anyone but themselves, which limits the growth of their businesses. He says it’s important to have standardized processes for the routine aspects of your business, which helps you to “clone yourself” and frees up employees to be more creative with the time they have left. He advises finding someone with 70% of your skills, train them to have another 10%, and be happy with 80%. “If you’re not happy with 80%, it’s going to be hard to replicate your success through systems,” he says. The Accelerator Program is intended to help business owners grow revenue from a minimum of $250,000 a year to over $1 million. For more information, click here. For a full list of BREW events, click here. Business Report, LSU Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute, Entrepreneurs’ Organization and CMO Accelerator are premier sponsors of BREW. —David Jacobs