Have you ever worked hard all day but failed to accomplish anything significant? You worked like a dog, but you didn’t move your business forward an inch.
You probably said something to yourself like, “Today was not a good use of my time. I worked all day but didn’t get anything done that really matters. If I keep doing this, I’ll never make any progress.”
You had “the epiphany,” the one every small business owner has at some point: you have to do less to do more. You reach a point where what seems paradoxical, becomes the key to getting your business to the next level. You need to stop doing some things in your business so that you have more time to focus on important, business-building activities that only you can take care of.
Nevertheless, probably not much has changed since that important realization. You are probably still spending your time doing things you shouldn’t and neglecting to do the high-leverage work that actually moves your business forward as opposed to just maintaining and staying afloat.
You know what the problem is: you can only do so much. If growth and forward movement is going to happen, at least if it is going to happen soon, you can’t continue doing everything yourself. You need to start delegating.
For you to actually change you approach to managing your time and delegating, it will take a conscious, committed decision on your part that you’ve reached a new stage in your business. A stage where you’ve gotten busy enough that you trying to do everything yourself is actually holding your business back. A stage where delegation is key to future growth. You’ve got to internalize this to the point that you commit to start delegating and focus on freeing your time.
Perhaps the best way to internalize this is to imagine how much progress your business could make if you had 40%, 20%, or even just 10% more time to focus on business-building, strategy-oriented tasks.
Once you’ve committed to making the necessary changes, the following 3 step process may help you get there faster.
STEP 1: Find someone to delegate to
You need someone to delegate to. Of course, I hope that you will use our small business virtual assistance service. For small business owners like you, we offer the opportunity to have someone on hand to help you without the committment and cost of hiring someone to work onsite. The ability to purchase small quanities of time and use them flexibly over the course of the month makes it suprememly affordable and convenient. Finally, getting access to our entire small business team – all of their talents, skills, and resources – means that you are getting tremendous value for a flat monthly fee.
STEP 2: Clarify your “do”s and “do not”s
Make two lists: one list is what you should be doing – those high-leverage, profitable, business-building activities that make a big difference to your bottomline – the second list is those things you shouldn’t be doing – either because you procrastinate them, you aren’t good at them, or they simply aren’t the best use of your time. These two lists will give you clarity – you’ll know exactly what you should and shouldn’t be spending your time on.
Post those lists in clear view from your desk. You want those two lists memorized. You want to remember them constantly throughout the day. When you start on one of your “do not” tasks, a red flag should be raised in your mind and you should know to stop and delegate. When you look at your “do” list and realized you haven’t touched it, you should think back to what you spent your day doing and add those things to your “do not” list.
STEP 3: Make delegation simple, easy, and reflexive
Spend time considering how to make delegation likely to happen. You want to eliminate potential barriers to delegation such as resistance from yourself. You know yourself better than anyone. What communication tool are you most likely to turn to? This is one of the reasons we allow clients to send in tasks so many ways (IM chat, email, phone, dictated audio, web form, fax, etc.), we want delegating to us to fit into your natural working style. Whatever you decide on, you need to make it systematic, quick, and as simple as possible.
Once you’ve decided on how you are going to communicate the task, decide on what information needs to be passed along. We recommend you pass on four pieces of information: 1. What you want done, 2. When you need it back, 3. How long you think it should take, and 4. A description of what the final result should be ideally.
Taking these three steps makes you dramatically more likely to actually begin delegating tasks so you have more free time to spend on business building – or just relaxing.
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