If you’re anything like me, you think you can do everything (and I mean everything) yourself!
Partly from desiring perfection, and partly because you’re a woman (thus, pretty great at multi-tasking).
But here’s the thing:
You’re never going to get where you want to go if you keep trying to do it all on your own.
You’re going to have to give up some of those easy tasks so you can make room for the stuff that you HAVE to do.
So, here are the four tasks you should ALWAYS delegate:
#1, Busy Work
Busy work is the work that is necessary to keep your business afloat but is time-consuming, simple stuff. Like calling Verizon to correct your phone bill, labeling and mailing promotional fliers, or sending newsletters if you have an online business.
These “busy” tasks don’t require knowing a skill, so anyone is capable of doing them. So, this is a no-brainer as to the type of tasks you should always delegate.
#2, Things You Hate
I am so guilty of this! There’s always something that you just hate doing that you should just have someone else do.
Here’s why: you hate doing it, right? So you’re going to stall, do it slowly, and be grumpy about it…
So rather than go through all of that, you should just hire someone else do your hated task. Don’t bring that negativity on yourself and into your business!
#3, House Work
This can be a hard one to let go of, honestly, because you always feel like you should be able to, oh, just do the dishes right quick. And then wipe down the counters, wash the clothes, sweep the floor, and, and…
You know how it is. But guess what? You don’t have to do all the housework!
Unless you live alone, there are people who can help you. If you’ve got a spouse, you should consider having a house meeting and dividing up the housework. (Side note, have you guys checked out When She Makes More by Farnoosh Torabi. Farnoosh’s research shows woman who make more money than their spouses also do more housework. Gasp, yes, you read that right.)
My solution for housework? Sure, my husband helps. But, hiring a housecleaner to come in regularly is a perfectly reasonable solution that works for us too.
#4, Things You Have to Learn
Say for instance, you make dog collars. And someone wants you to sell dog tags that go with them. What do you do?
If your first thought was “Figure out how to make dog tags,” then go girl! You’ve got that business mind! But… for this posts’ purposes, that’s not the right answer. The right answer would be to outsource it, especially if you already have your hands full or if it would take too long to learn. For creative things, I always look for another small business or a local freelancer that I can work with. Then I’m not only delegating, but also paying it forward. It’s a win-win.
Your time is worth at least $50 an hour. Probably more like $100…
This means that it’s way below your pay grade to be printing shipping labels, sweeping the floor, or stressing out over taxes.
In fact, if you think about it like that, if you pay yourself $100 an hour, but hire one person to do the housework and another person to do the simple tasks and pay them decently, like $15 per hour, you’re STILL netting $70 for that hour, and just think about how much more would get done!
When you delegate, everything that you had to do (plus the busy work, plus the housework) gets done, so you can kick your heels up faster and Netflix and chill at 4:30 in the afternoon instead of 10:30 if you were trying to do it all yourself.
When you decide that it’s finally time to hire someone, spend some time figuring out what tasks need doing and how often do they need to be done. For some things a freelancer would work, while it might be best to hire an employee for things that need to be done consistently. If you need an extra pair of hands to meet a deadline, definitely hire someone temporarily. But after, if you find that compiling stats or printing and organizing invoices takes too long, consider hiring a new employee.
So over to you:
What task do you need to delegate? Or, if you’ve got it all together (you go, girl), I’d love to hear what’s been the best thing you ever delegated below!
