Ever wondered how successful business owners achieve all they do?

Want to know their secret formula? Do you want to know how to free up your time so that you too can focus on the important stuff in your business? We reveal the way you can take control of your time and get more done more easily and more efficiently.

Best wishes,

Marie-Louise Cook
Editor – Daily Marketing Bulletin

Save Yourself Time: Delegate

The first time that solo entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown delegated work to another person, the relief was so intense that she burst into tears.

“I needed to get help with the administration,” recalls Brown, aka The Ezine Queen. “I mistakenly thought I could do it all by myself but I couldn’t. I was good at writing and I’d wanted to have my own writing firm and suddenly I was a business owner, trying to deal with dozens and dozens of other jobs that went with that role. It was overwhelming. I felt like a failure, like maybe I’d made a mistake.”

On the advice of a business coach, she delegated the administrative side of her business to a Virtual Assistant (VA). Virtual Assistants are home-based professionals who perform a wide range of office functions for one or more clients without setting foot in the client’s office.

Brown says delegating the administrative tasks to a virtual assistant transformed her business. Freed from the administrative tasks, Brown was able to focus on what she was best at – marketing, innovation and creativity. “I was in a completely different place of great energy because I wasn’t doing the tasks that drained me. I had more time for marketing, which is the most important thing.” Now a business coach, Brown says her mistake – trying to do everything – is something she sees many other business owners make.

“The only way you can really grow a business is by building systems and building a team. It’s hard for solo entrepreneurs to embrace this idea – they’re scared to spend the money and lose control. When I coach people, I tell them, ’You should only be spending time marketing, working with your clients, and generating new products and income streams. You should not be doing any administration at all. You should have people for anything and everything you can delegate.’”

If you don’t have staff and are overwhelmed you can follow Brown’s example and hire a VA to take care of your administrative work.

If you do have staff, then delegating tasks will not only free up your time to focus on marketing but also demonstrate your trust in the people who work for you. Asking for their help will show them how much your respect them. That’s a powerful motivator and will help to build your team.

Think of those tasks that take you away from working on building your business and that someone else may be better qualified to do like accounting, website design, deliveries, graphic design, travel arrangements, HR functions, and payroll, as well as activities like photocopying, data entry, data collection, report preparation, and even fact-finding assignments.

Once you’ve clarified what job, task, project or activity is to be delegated, choose someone who will be capable of completing it. You may need to train or even supervise the person you’ve chosen until it’s clear that they are capable of completing it on their own but this short-term training will pay long-term dividends.

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