When you start your own business you think that you have to do everything yourself. You want your business to succeed so you become a perfectionist and want everything done correctly and the way that you want it. Now this is ok, but a lot of tasks can be delegated to others. If you put too much on yourself you will end up getting stressed out and burnt out. This had happened to me a few times and that is why I delegate tasks to others so I am able to be more productive.
Start out Small
If you are like me you have a large list of daily tasks to do. Take a look at that list and pick out the smaller tasks that are easy and anyone can do. For me some of the easier things to do are posting news on ThinkComputers. That takes up about 30 minutes of my day and if I can eliminate it by delegating it to someone else I will. Small tasks are good to start with because they are easy for others to learn.
What Stresses You Out?
No everyone loves what they do, I know there are things that I have to do everyday that I wish that I didn’t have to do. Something you hate can be something that someone else loves to do. For example I really do no like doing motherboard reviews. They are just long and drawn out and all the tests that are required really take a long time. But I need to do motherboard reviews because they do really good traffic, which translates into money. Well one of my staff writers Frank loves doing motherboard reviews. He had no problem taking over the motherboard reviewer position from me.
Make sure they get something out of it
I’m not one to delegate a ton of work to someone and that person gets nothing out of it. I mean people are not going to work for you if they are not getting anything out of it. All of my reviewers on ThinkComputers get to keep the products they review. So in Frank’s case he gets to keep the motherboards he reviews, no bad right? In the blogging world this also follows suit, many bloggers allow guest bloggers to link back to their own blogs. This gets the guest blogger some traffic and makes it easier for the other blogger as he does not have to write posts everyday.
Make Sure You Stay Involved
If you have a good brand it should be easy to delegate tasks to other people, but you don’t want everyone else doing all of the work. In the case of a blog you don’t want all of the posts being written by other people. Most people come to your blog to read about what you have to say. I mean guest posts are good and interesting, but they want to hear what you have to say. If you are only posting 1 or 2 posts a month and the rest are guest posts people might find a new blog to check out. With ThinkComputers I stay involved by still doing reviews and dealing with all PR matters. I also post all news on the site to see what is going on in the computer hardware world.
Don’t Be Afraid
A lot of people are afraid to delegate tasks to others because they are afraid that someone else will not do a good job or will mess something up. The only thing I can say to that is give the person a chance.
If you have too much on your plate try to delegate some tasks to other people. You will be surprised at how much more productive you will become.