Running a business is a lot of work. Especially if you are on your own. In order for yourself to grow, you need to continue looking for business, projects and sales from potential clients / customers. We had started 2 businesses since 2015 plus 1 each for our own. So a total of 4 all together. It was amazing to get our first few clients and get contracts signed, but as business started to grow, we were running out of time and trying to multi-task all the projects we received which caused us to lose out on potential business. You can’t be superman or superwoman. We all need some sort of help.
I started to connect with other business contacts and friends who are in the same industry as I was. Once I was able to connect with a few, I felt more relieved knowing you can take some work off your plate. Yes, hiring a person means spending money to pay them for the work they do for you. You might think of it as losing out financially but it’s actually an investment. When you are able to delegate certain work or projects, you are able to make room for more business from other clients and/or customers.
If you don’t think you can afford to hire someone, their are plenty of graduates looking for an internships. It’s a great way to to help them as they help you. And if the work relationship works well, you will be able to grow your team.
Delegating tasks to others is good practice. I believe that all business owner need to eventually learn that. I’m still learning everyday.
Here are 3 lessons to learn about delegation:
1: You’re not superman. You can’t do it all on your own.
No matter how talented you are in your field, there is no way you can possibly run an entire business on your own. Everyone needs help and if you think you don’t, there is a possibility that you will fail or give up.
There are plenty of business owner who find it difficult to delegate. Whether it be because they don’t trust anyone, or they naturally love to take control of everything in every area of their lives.
Not that it’s a bad thing to want to take control. It’s a great quality to have as an owner of a business. However, if you don’t try, and you stick to that mentality, you will always be tempted to do it all yourself, every single time. And by doing everything yourself all the time, you will end up stalling on progress and just burnout.
2: Are you delegating enough? Probably not.
Every now and then, I would give some tasks to others, like taking on smaller clients social media or doing sales calls. Although, I still delegated some work for others to do. There were other things on my plate that was taking up a chunk of my time.
I spent a lot of time building websites for multiple clients all at the same time on my own that needed to be completed all around the same time frame. I was going insane. Losing sleep and pulling my hair. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but it was effecting me. I realized, I could hire a freelancer to take on some websites. A virtual assistant to make business calls and follow-up while I meet with businesses and finalize deals. So rather then spending too much time on projects that may not even be paid yet until completion, I now cut my time in half to make room for building new business relationships.
I also noticed that I would do tasks that I could’ve easily asked my accountant to follow-up with, such as invoicing, collecting payments. Or my virtual assistant to follow-up on e-mails. All the little things add up.
3: You spend money to make money.
As I mentioned earlier in this article. You are spending money on hiring people, but it’s an investment. And plenty of new business owners are scared of that thinking they are losing out.
Think about it, you could be spending $1,000 on someone who can complete a single project which then give you more time to land a business deal that brought you in $10,000. If you’re too focused on one project, you will lose out on a potential new project just because you didn’t have time to close the deal on a new one.
Investments are all about Return Of Investment (ROI) which is basically the same thing as delegating. If I’m going to pay someone to remove some tasks off my plate, I will have more time to go out earn more business which will lead to more money.
Conclusion
Not everything comes easy. But as your business grows, it will make a huge difference if you take these lessons about delegation seriously.
