Part 8 of my 10-part series Top 10 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make and How to Avoid Them.

Mistake #8 - Small Business Owners Don’t Delegate

The excuses?

• I don’t have anyone to delegate this to.
• It’ll take longer to teach someone to do it than just do it myself.
• I’ll just have to redo it myself later.
• I don’t have anything I can delegate - my work is too specialized.
• I can’t afford it.
• I tried it once, it was a frustrating experience.
• I just don’t want to get into hiring and managing employees.

Now, these are legitimate. Many business owners genuinely want to delegate, they just don’t know how.

I’ve had many a conversation with the exasperated entrepreneur. On one hand they desperately WANT to delegate. They talk at length about how hectic their life is — how they’re always running from one thing to another and never getting a chance to get ahead of the ball.

On the other hand, there is a part of us that REVELS in the chaos. We enjoy the rush and excitement of being on the move. There’s a sense of importance we get from being so in demand. And let’s face it that’s a pretty good feeling.

But it wears thin very quickly.

Why it’s a problem:

It’s dangerous and it’s addictive.

If you got into business to have a better quality of life…to GROW your business…to build a renewable base of income you can thrive on AND actually have a life outside of work? We’ll, your going to have to learn to delegate.

Business owners who don’t delegate flame out. You can’t sustain an 80 hour work week. Why would you want to?

Business owners who don’t delegate limit their business’s growth. There’s only so much you can do. You’ll hit a point where you can’t take on anymore without driving the business under. Unfortunately, many business owners still try and fail.

Worse still, you’ll feel TRAPPED by a business that was supposed to give you FREEDOM.

Ultimately, you’ll end up resenting the business and you’ll hate your job.

How to avoid this problem:

It all starts with a topic we previously discussed: Standardization.

1. Standardize: First you need to document what your processes are. What it is you actually do. You can then work to tweak these processes with each round.
2. Decide what to delegate: Look for items that are repetitive. Those items with the highest frequency are going to be the most easy to standardize & teach.
3. Articulate the outcome and a measures for the task:
4. How long should it take? What is the desired outcome? How will you measure the successful completion of the task. Can you describe it in 2-3 sentences that another human being will understand?
5. Find the right resource: Many of us at least have a spouse, a friend, a nephew…a mom we can count on to help from time to time. If that’s not something you want to get into and you can pay $6-15 an hour, try putting the task on something like Elance. You can put a project out against a couple different competitors and see who delivers the best product. Then you’ll be able to start building an inventory of colleagues you trust to source things to from time to time.
6. Teach & provide feedback: The first 3-5 times of working with someone, it’ll take longer to complete than if you did it yourself. Maybe 2-3 times as long as if you would have done it.You’ll also probably have to ride shot-gun, checking in every few steps to make sure it doesn’t get too far off track. Show them a step in your process once, then reset everything and let them take a stab. Provide feedback. Rinse. Repeat.
7. Be patient and keep trying: It’s a lot of work at the beginning. Particularly as you start with someone new. But it’s an essential investment if your business is to grow and provide you with the freedom an flexibility you covet.

Know this - each time you delegate something, YOU get better at it.

The goal of all this is not just to get a specific task off your plate.

You’re building a skill here. And like any skill, it takes practice and repetition to get it right.

So even if you go through one or two assistants before getting the right match, with each cycle of teaching and delegation it’ll get easier.

I promise your successes will start to compound to the point where you’ll wonder how you survived this long with out delegating XYZ tasks.

Related posts:

1. Standardization is the Basis of Continuous Improvment
2. Four-Hour Work Week? Seriously?