How Ozzy Osbourne Can Help You Grow Your Business

"I've listened to preachers, I've listened to fools, I've watched all the dropouts. Who make their own rules, one person conditioned to rule and control. The media sells it and you live the role “

Wow, heady stuff. This quote is not from some poet, valedictorian of your high school class or some quick witted socialite…it was Ozzy Osbourne. Yes, the same man that is purported to have bit the heads off of bats and generally cause chaos. 

You might look at a character like Ozzy and think that you don’t have anything in common, but I bet we all have a bit of Ozzy in us.  He was the greatest expression of himself that he knew how to be. I would not suggest you take on some of his behavior to get your business to the next level of success, but I would say that you need to be the best expression of YOU that you can be. Entrepreneurs and successful business owners always seem to get in their own way and put road blocks in place that are unnecessary and counterproductive to growing a winning enterprise. 

Ozzy did this most of his career, but what many people don’t realize is that he has a COCO (Chief Ozzy Control Officer), his wife Sharon. She handled all his business affairs and was the woman behind the man. Now, Ozzy did not consciously delegate, but to get your business from a mom and pop shop, you need to delegate authority and trust that the important facets of the operation or getting done. 

Focusing on what you do best might seem obvious. Most of us try to master things or spend too much time on tasks that are truly better suited to others. Ozzy left the bat eating up to him, but could not fathom booking tour dates and handling the finances.  During the “Less Stress for Success” episode of Basso On Business, Matt Silver of Ultimate Class Limousine faced similar issues- he owns the company, has many employees, yet STILL answered the phones!

Matt reasoned that he never wanted to hear a phone ring more than twice, but I helped him come to the resolution that in order for Matt to succeed, he needed to delegate non-essential tasks to (capable) employees to focus on the tasks better suited to a business owner. By doing that, he became more effective in his position. Take the time and effort to use your strengths to get your business moving in the right direction and delegate the other items to someone else.

Know your weaknesses; I know my weak point is keeping organized. By utilizing an executive assistant, I am prioritized and on time for all my meetings. You may not have an executive assistant, but you can use technology to help; I suggest your Blackberry, iPhone or whatever device you like that syncs to your desktop.

Getting out of your own way to make your business run efficiently is not a new concept. I am not suggesting that helping out is a bad idea, but it may not be in your company’s long term interest to do things that don’t push the vision forward and bolster your mission statement. Leave the hotel room trashing to someone else and concentrate on delegating to the appropriate personnel. If you’re a start up; try to utilize outsourcing (in America) to help with tasks; you can hire for almost any job or event Craigslist.com or other sites.

I suggest you create your own brain dump by writing things down, using your task manager in Outlook or using whatever application works well for you. This way you can prioritize, collect your thoughts and organize them while keeping or deleting items during downtime. Humans have roughly 30,000 thoughts in their head during the day so you can’t write them all down; keep the thoughts that you feel make sense. Try it for a few weeks; I think you will be surprised at the results.

We are all riding the crazy train of life. You will not go off the rails if you concentrate on being the best expression of you and work hard on getting out of your own way. I struggle with it every day. But, I bet Ozzy doesn’t think much about it.