Being all things in your own business

Delegation, outsourcing or hiring, whatever you call it, you can’t do everything yourself. Cash flow may be a major driver for you to be unable to pass tasks to others, but make sure that is the only reason.

Whilst I believe that anyone can learn anything and there are plenty of ways to do that quite easily with a laptop and internet connection, you may not be the best person to do everything with your business. There will be plenty of people who can do it better (and sometimes not). Be really open and honest about where your skills are. Make a list of what you need to achieve your goals. Now go through that list and be very honest about what you can do yourself. Then go through that list again and make sure that any you can do, you want to do.

This is important. You can spend your days doing things you love to do and driving your business forward in the ways you enjoy. Then you get to the tasks that sap your energy and take longer than they should because you are neither an expert or excited by them. These are the ones on your list that you need to hire for. Don’t kid yourself that you will get better at them or you can look at them later. It is unlikely that you will ever find them enjoyable, even less so when you are doing everything for everybody and keeping your business afloat.

There are times when you may not be able to afford outside help with some of these tasks and you have to prioritise where you spend your money. I suggest keeping a list of things that you want to have others do for you as soon as you can. Determine an estimate for each of these services and then understand what you need to do to hit that marker. Having that as your goal can be a bigger motivator than sales targets!

There are only so many hours in the day, you need to make sure that the time you spend on anything is moving your business forward and by passing tasks to others, you may not be saving money, but you are saving time that can be used to generate business the best way you know how. It is likely the reason you went into business for yourself in the first place and why you can now afford to hand over and delegate.