The Power Of Letting Go
My belief is that a lot of entrepreneurs, and professional business owners in particular, find it extremely difficult to delegate. I know that it can be extremely challenging right now.
Interestingly enough, there was a really great episode that we did on the Game Changers Experience podcast called “Don’t be a soul-sucking CEO”, during which I interviewed Gary Ridge. We were talking about micro-managing. Now in these strange times, delegation is probably going to be one of the key factors if you want to get serious business growth.
You’ve got to start to delegate because the big problem with a lot of entrepreneurs and professional business owners is that they wear too many hats. The big problem with wearing too many hats is that you try to learn too many skills. You try to be everything to everybody. From experience, it’s completely and utterly overwhelming, because there are just so much things to do. You’re the leader of your own business.
I know that some of you are thinking that the reason you don’t delegate, or the reason you don’t delegate as much as you should, is because you think it’s quicker and easier to do it yourself. I totally understand. I’ve mastered the hard way the art of delegation. We have a marketing team now, turning content from the podcast into different mediums. We have a variety of different articles that come out on medium.com. We’re experimenting with some amazing videos on YouTube and launching a new TV channel.
The other reason why entrepreneurs and all the professional business owners don’t delegate as much as they should do is because they’re thinking about money.
There are some really thought-provoking questions that you may or may not have been asked in the past. Get yourself a notebook and pen handy and write down some answers.
How do you value yourself?
What I mean by that is financially, how do you value yourself? We’ve all got goals in our lives. We’ve got financial goals, fitness goals, wellness goals. I admire people who’ve got goals.
If we think about it financially, your business has the financial goal of earning £100,000, hypothetically speaking. Within that hundred grand, how many weeks of the year are you going to work? There are 52 weeks in the year and generally, most people take between four and six weeks off. So we’ll just say for today is that you’re going to have four weeks’ vacation. So that’s 48 weeks of work.
How many hours would you typically work on a daily basis? For example, you could work 10 hours per day. And say we work five days a week. So that’s essentially 50 hours per week. Now, take the hundred thousand pounds, divided by 48 weeks, which is £2,083 per week. Now we divide that by the 50 hours per week that we will work. That gives us £41.67. Rounding up, we should be valuing yourself at £42 per hour.
If you are doing tasks or activities that earn less than £42 per hour, then essentially what you’re saying to yourself is “I am devaluing myself”.
What are the passions that you have within your business?
What’s the real reasons why you do your business? Some of my passions about running my business is that I love to create content. Podcast episodes like Power Up Thursdays on the Game Changers Experience podcast, doing interviews, doing YouTube, writing articles — I love doing content. It’s fantastic. It makes me feel happy and fulfilled. I love building relationships. I love building trust and credibility; I love building my brand. So, there are certain things that I really enjoy doing with about my business.
But there are some things that I really detest. For example, I really do not enjoy managing my social media or managing my inbox.
What I would like you to do is a way to write down a list of things that you really enjoy, what are some of the passions that you love about your business? What do you enjoy doing in terms of activities? And what are the things that you don’t enjoy doing. If you can start making a list of passions that you really enjoy doing, and you focus on those things. All the other things that take time can then be delegated.
Does each activity align to your WHY?
Does it align to your values? Does it make you happy? Does it make you fulfilled? Does it energise you? If it doesn’t do those things, it needs to be systemised or delegated out.
How much will it cost you?
I’m not just talking financial costs. I’m talking about how much would it be detracting from your passions? What is it costing you as a business?
These are the four questions that I ask you to honestly answer. Use your notebook and pen and paper, and think about how you can delegate more and how you can systemise your business more. The more that you do that, the more that you’re going to feel that you have control, you’re going to feel a lot more empowered, you’re going to feel like you can grow your business faster.
We’ve got the same 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s what you do with that time. I have the same time as everyone else and I manage to get probably about 10 times more done than the average entrepreneur and professional business owner because I’ve mastered this.
I used to wear those hats all the time. We all go through a journey.
The Stop Doing List
The other thing that I’d like you to do right now, as you got your notebook and pen out, is to write on the top of the pages, “My stop doing list”.
What are some of the activities that you really dislike doing? Many people have a “To Do” list. That list is probably endless. This is why a lot of entrepreneurs and professional business owners are so time-poor. Because you have these never ending to do lists.
What entrepreneurs need to realize is you need to have a “Stop Doing” list. Make a list of activities that take up a lot of your time. The questions you need to ask yourself is, does the activity (managing your social media operations, managing numbers, creating graphics, whatever it might be) make you happy? If it doesn’t make you happy, use your notebook: Does it make you happy? Put a smiley face or a sad face.
If it doesn’t make you happy, then can it be delegated? Are you empowering your team? One thing that I do with my team members is that I give them full projects. And there’s a communication, there’s expectations. I manage it, but I don’t do it.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to let go, and I get it, it’s really difficult to let go. But if you want to grow your business, if you want to scale it to the next level, it doesn’t necessarily have to cost you a lot of money. That’s the only way that you’re going to effectively grow the business efficiently.
Is the task recurring? The best way to actually do this is to get a weekly journal, write down all of the activities that you do now. In the Power Up Thursdays episode, Time Management Secrets, I talked about the power of having your day blocked out into 30-minute segments. Write down all the activities that you do within that 30 minutes and then spreading that over the day, then you can get an idea about what you’re doing on an on a day to day operational basis. If you’re doing tasks on a regular basis, whether be managing emails, creating graphics, or whatever it is, ask if it can be systemized. Can you use tools out there that can be systemised to make your life easier? One of the real basic systems for me is a CRM system or an email management system.
Some of you may still be doing your own bookkeeping and accountancy. If you are, are there systems out there that you can leverage to make your life a lot easier? I hate doing those things. I have a finance team that manages all of that kind of stuff, they just report back to me with the numbers. Again, I don’t do any of that stuff. It just doesn’t interest me at all. It’s really important to empower others, leverage other peoples’ skills. They’ll get it done faster — it’ll probably take you 10 times longer because your heart and soul are not in it.
What are what are some of the things that you could essentially put on your stop doing list? Gary Vaynerchuk mentioned about the fact that there are so many different social media platforms out there now, including Tik Tok, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, depending on where your target audience is hanging out. To articulate and create different content for different social media platforms can be really overwhelming. Can you delegate that task out? Can you get a virtual assistant, for example?
If you create graphics, which might be for a particular event, whether it be a virtual event or a digital event, can you find a graphic designer who can do it for less money and can do it less time than you.
Day to day operations, in terms of managing clients, or customers, or if you’re shipping products out, also take time. Are there certain things that you can use to make the operations more smooth and more efficient? Administration tasks takes up a lot of time for a lot of people. Research can take up a lot of time. If you’re doing some market research and you’re trying to find out something like you’re creating something new, can you delegate the research out? Are you creating certain channels for Lead Generation? Are you managing the follow up?
There are certain activities that you could essentially do and there are certain things that you can delegate out or use systems to make things more efficient. I’m big on systems this year. Once we implemented systems in our business, it was plain sailing. Initially, it took up a little bit of time to set it all up. Now, we have a great email system, for example, which is all automated. We have a marketing team, who are great at creating graphics, creates content for our podcasts and videos, I have my virtual assistant and the finance team. I’m a delegate King now.
It feels so empowering when you delegate things out and you let things go because you’re going to feel free. I feel like I can do so much more with my time. I feel like I can serve more people, I can impact more people, rather than being bogged down by things that I really don’t enjoy doing.
We’ve been receiving so many great compliments from people, so I just wanted to say I’m truly thankful for your great comments and reviews on the Game Changers Experience podcast. I’m truly blessed.
