“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” - Many

If you know me, you have heard me say this at least 100 times. There are times when you need to move fast and doing that alone makes sense. That approach will only take you so far until you need help to continue moving beyond your own constraints. Too often we can get stuck in the cycle of doing it all on our own because (1) we get to keep all of the upside and (2) it's easier than dealing with people. I get it and wouldn't argue those points, but there is another perspective to this.

When you go alone, it's just you. You are the CEO, the marketer, the sales person, the operations person, the administrative assistant, and the janitor. Nothing wrong with doing all of those jobs, but your time will forever limit how far you can go. Your growth and success will expand until it fills up your time but you can't create more time and you can only work harder for so long (hello burnout). When you surround yourself with other people, you gain the benefit of their time. The available hours of the business increase, allowing more things to be done in the same amount of your time. I also find that when I work with people that have different skills than me, they are often much better than me at those things and the business actually improves.

You can create this time leverage through employees, contractors, virtual assistants, and now you can even find some benefit from AI and systems. There is no limit to how much time leverage you can create and that is how someone like Elon Musk can run the number of businesses he does at the scale they are at, because while he is at an event telling advertisers to "go away" (his language was much more colorful) his businesses are still running and making money. 

The moral of the story, you can hustle and grind forever and you will be the limitation on your success. Or you can leverage systems and people to scale your business beyond your capacity and give yourself a chance to have a life outside of work. I would rather have 20% of a significantly larger pie than 100% of a bite size pie (no pumpkin please), how about you?