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Need Help to Grow Your Business Faster? Here's Four Ways to "Clone" Yourself You can only do so much, but the systems you build can do so very much more.

By Christian Martin Edited by Dan Bova

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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"Entrepreneurship is connecting, creating, and inventing systems -- be they businesses, people, ideas, or processes. A job is the act of following the operating system someone else created." - Taylor Pearson, The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the nine-to-five.

As a business owner, it's your job to create systems that deliver value to the marketplace. All too often the overworked, burnt-out business owner has forgotten this. These business owners believe that they can manually do everything in their business themselves. It's as if they've created a job for themselves, instead of a business. If you can't take a week off without taking a hit to your income, you may have lost your way on the entrepreneurial path.

Here's four ways to clone yourself and grow your business in less time.

Related: Create Value -- Not Just Buzz

1. Build a team around you.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked, "as a self-made man, what's your blueprint for success?" He replied, "I am not a self-made man. I got a lot of help." If you asked any high achiever (who is honest), they would agree with Isaac Newton who said, "if I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Now, for the entrepreneur, this means that you use mentors, and learn from the great thinkers and entrepreneurs who came before you. This statement also means that you need to hire a team. You can't do everything in your business alone if you want to grow. Start by outsourcing low level tasks, and focus your time on high value tasks that will impact your bottom line. From there, move on to hiring strategic team members to take over day to day operations so that you can focus on the 10,000 foot view of the business.

Build relationships with those ahead of you so that you too can stand on the shoulders of giants.

Related: Six Steps to Build a Strong Team

2. You will need to advertise.

Lead generation is one primary function necessary for a business to survive, grow and thrive. Without new potential opportunities for revenue coming into the business, most entrepreneurs' businesses will slowly die out, like a plant starved of sunlight.

To ensure healthy growth of your company, you should have new leads coming into the business every single day of the week. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. Rather than manually doing all of the lead generation yourself, try advertising. Lead generation refers to bringing new potential customers into the business, and offering them your products or services. When done correctly, you can bring leads in to the business every day on autopilot.

While Facebook advertising gives you access to an audience of over 1.5 billion people, Social Media Examiner estimates that 59 percent of business owners received a negative ROI on their social media efforts, including Facebook. Of the remaining 41 percent, only one-third of those business owners reported earning more than $2,000 on their social media efforts. In short, most people will fail when they dabble in paid social advertising. Use a seasoned pro to get the best results on your social media.

Don't let this scare you away. Investing in a profitable lead generation is one of the best investments you will ever make in your business.

Related: The Six Best Advertising Strategies for Small Business

3. Sell digital assets.

Imagine if you built a house that you could sell over and over and over again to every interested buyer, instead of just once to the highest bidder. Sounds pretty nice, right?

Unfortunately, with physical assets, you can sell them once. Sure you can rent them too, but that's generally also only to one customer. By creating "digital assets," you can rent or sell your asset to as many people as want to buy. A "digital asset" is created once, then sold over and over again. This includes ebooks, apps, training programs, online courses, software, permits and licenses.

Michael Jackson died in 2009 but his estate earned $826 million in 2016 because he owned and sold digital assets -- licenses to his own songs and songs by musicians such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan. This huge sum is largely due to the sale of MJ's stake in the publishing company Sony/ATV which owns the aforementioned licenses. Ever after his death his "business" continues to make money.

Now, you aren't a deceased world-famous pop stars, but most business owners can create an offering in the form of online training or the use of licensing of intellectual property. Almost every business can sell a digital asset of one sort or another.

If you sell a physical product, can you sell training on how to use your product? Can you license your product to another company? If you're in the restaurant business, can you franchise your concept and get paid for your brand? If you're a personal trainer, can you take your training online? If you're a consulting company, can you sell software that helps your clients achieve their desired result?

Try to imagine how someone else could benefit from your intellectual property.

Related: Selling an Asset? Here's How to Calculate Digital Assets.

4. Automate.

Now more than ever, it is possible for any business owner to automate tasks in their business. One of first places to look in regards to automation is in your marketing. Automate your follow up with leads to provide value, establish credibility and continue to make offers to your prospective customers. Do this using an email sequence that is designed to take your potential buyers through the buying cycle without you having to manually do it all.

Related: 15 Tools to Create Automation in Your Small Business

Imagine having a full time salesperson on your team who works 24 hours a day, seven days a week and can talk to every single prospect at once. That is what it's like to have a well timed follow up sequence in place in your business. If you can't make a sale, and provide value to your customer without showing up to work in the morning, I hate to break it to you, but you may have a job you've created for yourself, instead of a business that works for you.

To learn how to turn your expertise into a scalable training program, start selling digital assets, and learn to get paid whether you're in the office or on the beach.

Christian Martin

Sales Training for Coaches and Consultants

Christian Martin is the CEO and lead trainer at ProfitFox.Co, a program that teaches coaches and consultants to build a 6-figure/yr business in 60 days.

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