Let’s say you’ve made it past those vital first few years of your business. You think of yourself as a business owner (even if you don’t take that TOO seriously all the time) and you have a steady stream of customers that seems to be steadily growing. You thought things would get easier as you moved from worrying about whether your business would survive into growth mode, but it seems that as you grow, so do the things you worry about. This becomes particularly true if your growth has required you to bring in additional staff (either contractors or employees) or to track several streams of revenue. So what is a growing business owner to do when success means more work? We’ve found the answer, and it certainly sounders simpler than it is: delegate. You’ve probably heard that from advisors before, so we’ve listed some concrete examples of things we’ve had success delegating recently.
- Accounting and Bookkeeping (including Payroll!). This one is sort of a no-brainer, but since a lot of business owners begin by DIY-ing their finances but very few would say this is an area where they actually excel. If you are paying employees or contractors you have even more incentive to delegate this to an expert in the field, because the IRS and state departments of revenue won’t accept “I didn’t know I had to pay that to you” as a reason to waive penalties or interest. Payroll is a very complicated process that can be made very simple with the right delegation partner, so this is something we strongly advise clients not to try to handle themselves. Take it from Davis, who just handed all our accounting off to the ever capable Bjorn Zellner, it’s amazing how much time you have to do actual paying work when you leave the finances to the “numbers people.”
- Website and Tech Matters. You likely haven’t gotten to the growth stage in your business without having a fairly functional website, and you may even have (and use on a somewhat regular basis) social media accounts for your company. That’s good, but because of this you may also spend time trying to figure out the best budget for your Facebook sponsored post and how to add an email address link in WordPress. This is not a good use of your time, and it’s something that could likely be answered in mere seconds by someone who specializes in this area. Trust us, we’ve learned. That’s why our website is now managed by the fine folks at The Mighty Mo through their Magic Wonderful program. Small monthly payment, tons of time saved.
- Contract Review. You’ve reached the section of this blog where we finally self-promote (you were wondering when it was coming, weren’t you?). Seriously though, if there’s one place where we save clients time, money and headaches down the road, it’s when they realize they did not go into business for themselves because they were excellent at reading and interpreting contracts, so they turn them over to us. Because clients often have a number of different contracts (unless they’ve heeded our prior advice and drafted their own form), we have monthly flat fee packages starting at just $200 which include ongoing contract review. We’ve found this works great for our clients and for us as we always know what they’re working on and can often prevent issues before they even arise.
- The Actual Work. Okay, this one sounds a bit out there doesn’t it? “I’ve delegated all of the other stuff Davis, now you want me to actually delegate the WORK too? What am I going to do?” I’ll tell you. You’re going to go get more work. What we mean by this is – if you have what seems to be too much work, hire or contract with someone and then you spend your time finding MORE work. If you have a lot of customers, you must be doing something right, but you can only grow so far alone. Hiring can be terrifying, but it can also be your ticket to an amazing amount of growth for your company. Trust us, our recent expansion has taught us this lesson. Find good quality people who share your vision and values for your business, and then delegate what you can.
Thinking delegation might be a good idea for you? Want to know what other things you might want to delegate to keep your business growing? Then join us and a few of our closest co-working companies at CoCo Uptown on November 12th for a lunch and learn about delegation. Lunch is provided, all you have to do is RSVP via this link: http://novnakedlauch.eventbrite.com. Hope to see you there!