Delegation isn't an option
Many businesses start as a side-effect of having a passion for doing something and deciding to ask someone to pay you to do it.
Nothing wrong with that.
But it’s this same passion for the service that ends up being the culprit as to why you will hit a ceiling in your business. Your business will stop growing at some point but you will be too busy to realize it.
You’ll be servicing customers consistently and you’ll be earning revenue while producing value BUT your business will stall in growth because YOU have become the bottleneck.
The only way to move forward is to delegate your work. You must take off one of your many hats and hand it off to someone else.
Delegation is important, but difficult
Without delegation (and learning the skill of delegation), you’re destined to moving only at the speed of your own self. Which is a perfectly capable speed if you throw the word “scale” out of your business goals.
So why do you think most agencies don’t delegate as they should?
Fear.
You will be stuck spinning your wheels for as long as you allow yourself to be controlled by the fear of hiring someone to replace you.
Do any of these fears resonate with you?
The fear of silence.
Bootstrapping a business on your own, or even with a partner, is going to require a constant grind in the beginning. You’ll be learning from new mistakes almost constantly but you’ll also be seeing successes and the results of your hard work almost constantly.
This constant feedback loop gets addicting. And this is perfectly fine—for a season.
If you stay in this loop for too long, you will get used to the constant grind. You will get comfortable with tight deadlines and barely get your work done in the nick of time.
Stopping will feel wrong. Stopping will feel unproductive.
When you hire someone to replace the things that you’re doing, you are going to have a gap in your daily schedule that needs to be filled. This gap is a new feeling and is one of the many reasons business owners have a hard time letting go of their workload.
But what you’ll find, if you truly delegate the task, is that this gap will quickly fill itself with other work. Your goal is to ensure the things that fill that gap are more productive for the business than what you were doing.
The fear of a lower standard
You will think you are the only person who can do this as well as you can.
Which isn’t true at all.
What is true is that you will *care* about your business more than an employee would, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t skilled enough to replace you.
If an employee can do something at least 80% as well as you can, but it frees up your time to focus on scaling and growth, then it is worth the hire.
Stop trying to hire the *perfect* team member.
The fear of the unknown
You may be unsure of how to hire, train, and retain.
This is nothing more than a skill—and it can be learned.
But there are many talented staffing agencies out there as well that can hire, train, and place the role you’re needing in your business.
The moment you allot “lack of knowledge” to stop your business from growing, it will always come back to haunt you.
The need for new knowledge never ends—but the number of videos, tutorials, websites, and information online is unlimited. Learn how to study and apply quickly.
Want to grow past the early stages? Delegate.
Don’t delegate if you want to:
Work long days, forever
Burn out in your business
Drop the business when you’re in the hospital
So what’s holding you back?
Stop letting the fears associated with delegation hold you back.
Let this week be the week that you take the first steps toward delegating at least one of the tasks, or group of tasks, that you manage. If you’d like me to write on how to prioritize what to delegate then please leave a comment and I’ll make it happen.
Taking your next steps towards delegation could mean:
Listing out what can be delegated.
Initiating a process document, or SOP (standard operating procedure), for the task.
Posting a job post looking for a new hire, or asking around for candidate referrals.
No matter what the next steps are, the only way forward is to delegate.
It doesn’t matter what happened last week. This is a new week, and this is your Monday Reset.