I had three conversations with different entrepreneurs today. All three of them have established businesses and are trying to take them to the next level but one of them is going to do far better than the other two.
The biggest challenge, I learned, with the first two entrepreneurs I met was that they did not have the right people around them. One was doing everything himself. The other had a few staff but did not have the right team in place to grow her business to the next step.
The third entrepreneur was different. We spoke and he introduced me to a new venture he was starting and wanted my help with. We agreed on some high level details and the next step is for him to connect me with the people in his organization who handle the specific areas we discussed. I, in turn, will then connect them with the people at my company who will run with the project.
Once they are all set up, we will both move on to new deals for our companies.
If you’re going to grow your business to any sort of substantial size and if you don’t want to be working 18 hour days you’ll need to learn how to delegate.
Delegation is as simple as finding someone to do the tasks that free up your time to focus on higher value projects. A classic example is data entry. Entrepreneurs often spend their time doing data entry which they could hire someone to do for $10 / hour. They could then use that time to land new business and bring in 10, 100, or 1,000 times that amount!
In our upcoming YoungEntrepreneur.com newsletter, YE founder Adam Toren shares his goals for the New Year. One of them is “Learn to delegate more effectively so I can focus on doing what I do best .” (If you want to receive the newsletter you need to have a YE account – sign up here)
The first guy I hired was for 1 hour a day. He did data entry for me and I only had to pay him for 5 hours per week. That gave me an extra 5 hours per week to go out and close new business. As I brought in new sales I could afford to hire him for more hours and eventually bring him on full time.
You don’t have to be rich and successful to delegate but you do have to delegate to become rich and successful.
How have you delegated tasks in your business to free up your time to focus on higher value work?
It can be really difficult to choose the right time to delegate tasks to others in order to help yourself more efficiently run your company. I advise many computer consultants starting their own businesses, and they often tell me that knowing when to hire additional help is really challenging. Sometimes I find that business owners have a hard time giving up control of elements of their business. But in reality, does it make sense to waste hours of time on simple tasks like break/fix computer repairs or simply “minding the store” at the expense of important marketing tasks, generation of new leads or critical networking that will lead to more long-term clients to sustain your business? On the other side of the coin, sometimes the computer consultants I work with hire help too soon and end up underestimating the cost of additional labor (I provide a “back of the napkin” cost calculator for hiring additional help in both my Computer Consulting Kit Home Study Course and also my blog). Knowing how and when to delegate is an interesting dilemma, but one that can be managed well with a strong business plan followed to the letter and revised often.