I met with Kim for our first coaching session. Kim owned a successful small business with about 7 employees and 200 clients. While the business was financially successful, Kim was exhausted and overwhelmed with the amount of work she had to accomplish to keep the business running every day. She was working days, nights and weekends with little if any time for her two boys.
The challenge and the solution we’re both evident within the first few minutes of our meeting. Kim needed to delegate.
As a business owner your number one job is to get better at business.
Anything that takes time away from you working on your business or getting better at business must be delegated or eliminated from your day.
Step 1. Make a list of everything you are currently responsible for.
Kim’s list looked like this.
- Get mail
- Sort mail
- Pay bills
- Make deposits
- Filing
- Answer customer calls
- Answer customer emails
- Answer all incoming calls
- Invoice vendors
- Build Referral source relationships
- Recruiting
- Sourcing
- Interviewing
- Hiring
- Marketing
- Social media
- Networking
- Newsletter
- Bookkeeping
- Manage team
- Human Resources
- Payroll
- Compliance management
- Internal Auditing
Sound familiar? As a small business owner you may think that by doing it all yourself, you’re saving money.
Here’s the harsh reality. You are costing yourself money, growth opportunities, and possibly your sanity by holding on to everything that needs to be done in your business.
How valuable is your time? If gaining a new client generates $1,000.00 and takes you an hour, why would you spend an hour sorting through mail? Go generate the revenue and let someone else sort that mail!
Step 2. Only me
There may be things on your list that only you can or should do at this stage of your business, like managing the company finances. (Because you haven’t put checks and balances in place for someone else to do it. )
Take a few moments and write your name by those things that only you can do right now.
Step 3: First priority
Next prioritize by level of experience needed. The lower the expertise needed to accomplish that task the quicker you must delegate it. Things like getting the mail, filing, and answering incoming calls are easily teachable tasks that take a lot of your time and must be delegated first.
Take a few moments to select the must delegate first items on your list with the number 1.
Step 4: Second priority
Next prioritize the next level of expertise items by placing the number 2 next to them.
Step 5: Determine the who
Next determine if you already have someone who could take on those tasks or if you’ll need to outsource or hire.
Step 6: Create the plan
Finally create a plan to delegate and eliminate anything that takes time from working on and getting better at business!
Delegate
- Work less hours
- Accomplish more
- Stop holding your company back