A common piece of advice from business coaches to those who want to grow their business is to hire team members who can do the support work so you can focus your efforts on money-making tasks. In other words, don’t waste your time doing bookkeeping or answering emails because you’ll make more money selling your signature program or coaching clients.
So how’s a business supposed to run smoothly when you’re not doing those necessary support tasks? Simple…you hire people to do those tasks for you. There are expert Virtual Assistants who can create an organized inbox with filters, folders, and labels in mere minutes. There are expert Bookkeepers who find joy in numbers and live for balancing your books each month. And there are still others who adore creating online content and helping customers with their questions and problems. This is the team you need to create.
There’s Not Enough Time in Your Day
If this is your excuse for not getting tasks done, then it’s time to hire at least one team member. Make a list of your most pressing tasks that need doing and hire the appropriate person for the job. Start small if necessary, paying a Virtual Assistant for 5 hours a month, for instance, and then work up from there as you become more comfortable delegating tasks to her. You’ve just gained 5 hours in your month so use it wisely.
You Can’t Clone Yourself
How on earth can you build your business while also getting prospects into your sales funnel and creating books or other signature programs? You can’t, plain and simple, because there is only ONE of you! This leads back to you doing the money-making tasks. Hire a ghostwriter to write your book or programs; hire a Virtual Assistant to help with administrative tasks; hire a Customer Service Specialist to answer your phones and client questions. While they work, you work on building relationships with your clients and prospects.
You Don’t Have Time to Learn the Latest Technology
Technology is wonderful and keeps improving every day but who has the time to learn all these programs and apps? Canva is certainly a cool tool for designing graphics but instead of fooling around for hours to design your book covers or social media graphics, hire a graphic designer who already knows about design and color principles and likely has the latest and greatest design program. There’s no learning curve here. You only have to explain your vision to the designer and let her take over. Again, focus on your money-making activities.
I Don’t Know What Tasks to Give Up
Giving up control can be intimidating but if you have a business plan and know exactly what tasks YOU want to handle, the art of delegation becomes much easier.
Amen to that, Paul! If you need support to free up your time to focus on forming new relationships and nurturing existing relationships, then by all means hand off tasks to an experienced Virtual Assistant who you can partner with to help run your business. Took the words right out of my mouth! 🙂
I hope I wasn’t rude when I took those words out of your mouth 😉
So true, my support team currently is my family.. and I do delegate some tasks to them 🙂
and hopefully I can build up to the point where I will be able to hire a VA..
Family is the best support team! (well most of the time 😉 )
We learned those rules long ago. When we started our firm with five talented folks, we each determined what we did best. Allocating them (according to majority vote) among us. And, then requiring each of us to add one (mundane, business-related) task that would also master. That left only one or two other activities. Which determined what team members needed to be added. We still operate the same way- albeit with many fewer founders still around.
That is the way to stick with it!