The Power of Delegation
One of the big challenges as a small business owner is learning to let go of tasks. Your business is your baby, you have built it from scratch and spent years building your reputation and customer base. As your business has grown, the admin has probably grown with it, taking up a larger share of your day and when I say day, I don’t just mean the working day. As your to-do list keeps growing, it can take time away from actually growing your business. Delegation is key to running a successful small business, it gives you the space to focus on what really matters.
Yet despite this, many business owners find it difficult to handover tasks to either other staff members or Virtual Assistants like myself. Have you ever thought any of the following:
“It will be too hard for others to do”
“No one will be able to do the task as well as I can”
“I should be able to do everything”
To an extent, one or more of these may be true. But let me take you back to the first paragraph of this blog and two key sentences, “As your to-do list keeps growing, it can take time away from actually growing your business” and “Delegation is key to running a successful small business, it gives you the space to focus on what really matters”.
Let me use myself as an example here. I am a partner, mother, a me (You know what I mean) and a Virtual Assistant. In the mornings before I start work, I’ll throw on a load of washing before I go off to the gym. During the day, I may put on the dishwasher and head back to my desk. Now if I didn’t ‘Delegate’ the dirty clothes to the washing machine or the dirty plates to the dishwasher and stood at the sink washing them myself I would have less time to work on my business as a Virtual Assistant. So, what I am trying to say here is that it’s not about whether I ‘can’ do something myself, but whether I ‘should’ be doing it for myself and what other things I can be doing while I have delegated.
The same theory applies to your business. As your business is growing, so does the to-do list including all the admin. But there are other more important things that you really need to be doing to continue your business growth, and if you continue to do all yourself, your business will suffer.
Think about how much you earn an hour when you are carrying out the core activities of your business, the time spent producing your product, or visiting a client. Then think about how many hours a week you spend doing those activities which you ‘shouldn’t’ be doing. The Independent stated that the average business owner needs an additional four hours in the day to complete admin tasks. If this hits home with you, think about how many hours you are working to do tasks that you personally do not need to be doing. That’s how much money you are missing out on by not delegating.
It’s not just about the extra money either. If you’re still trying to do all this other day-to-day work you’re used to doing, well, you’re going to end up working well into your evenings and weekends without being able to get away from the stress of it all.
Delegation not only makes growing a larger business possible, but also far less stressful and time-consuming. You won’t burn out, you’ll get to enjoy your life, spend time with your friends, family and dog if you have one!
So next time you are feeling overwhelmed by your long to-do list, think about what you can give to some else to do.