Deciding What to Delegate

*“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” – John C. Maxwell*

There comes a time in most businesses when you’ll want to start hiring a team. You simply cannot do it all, and if you want your business to grow, delegating is key.

I recently did a webinar with Heather Crabtree about delegating, where I identified four steps to figuring out what you need to delegate.

Track Your Time

Before you can hire someone, you need to know where you’re currently spending time in your business. Spend a week tracking everything you do—how much time you spend on social media, talking to clients, checking email, engaging with your clients, etc. You can use a time-tracker like Toggl or use a spreadsheet to check off what you are doing throughout the day. It’s up to you how detailed you get, but don’t try to analyze the time just yet. Just track. And as you’re doing this, you may see some habits that you can adjust to save yourself some time (too much social media, maybe?).

Get Organized

Next, you’ll want to organize your time into “buckets.” Create some high-level buckets of where you spend your time—client work, marketing, accounting, administration and even family/personal are good places to start, but feel free to add any others that work for your business. You will use information from your time tracking to help you decide which buckets you need.

Then, within these bigger buckets, try breaking out some of the smaller tasks. In the accounting bucket, you might find bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, invoicing, etc. In the marketing bucket, you’ll find content creation, content scheduling, research, advertising, etc.

Analyze

Now that you know where you’re spending your time and how those buckets fit together, it’s time to analyze. Questions to ask yourself include:

What is taking up the most time in your business?
Which tasks do you love doing?
Which tasks feel like they drain you?
Which tasks are revenue-generating?
Which tasks do you not need to do yourself?

Keep in mind that what works for one company may not work for yours. Don’t jump on the bandwagon and hire someone for a task just because someone else hired her. You may not need help in that role and she may not be a good fit for your business—through no fault of her own.

Once you’ve determined where you’re spending your time and which tasks you may want on your plate, it’s time to think about bringing people onto your team.

Hiring

It’s important to hire people who have a specific expertise. You wouldn’t hire a general virtual assistant to take care of your books for you; you’d hire a bookkeeper or an accountant. And you wouldn’t hire a social media manager as a full time employee without first trying her out as a contractor.

Focus on hiring the right people for the right roles in your business to make delegation more comfortable for you and a road to success for your new team members.

I encourage you to watch my free webinar for more on how to delegate. This is the perfect time of year to start thinking about what kind of team members you’ll need so you can hit the ground running at the beginning of the year!

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct