Why Business Owners Should Delegate

Hello All,

According to Statistics Canada, in 2019, 54% of all businesses had between 1 and 4 employees. It is likely (70% according to some sources) that the majority of these represent businesses with a single founder/employee/shareholder.

This is fine for many business owners, particularly contractors and freelancers who simply provide a service and take on a finite number of clients. However, there does come a time for many business owners when you start to feel overwhelmed. Your area of expertise is the product or service that you provide and perhaps you have a background in something else such as marketing or finance. You are not, however, an expert in all areas of running a business. Additionally, you might be spreading yourself so thin that your business is suffering or at least not reaching its full potential. If you do find yourself working at every available moment, thinking about your business even when you aren’t working and the idea of 8 hours of sleep seems like an unattainable luxury, then it is likely time to hire some help.

As someone who has struggled with delegation, it can be difficult to relinquish control. You know your business better than anyone and you don’t believe that someone else will be as diligent, competent or efficient. Hiring the right person can be a huge challenge as simply interviewing them isn’t necessarily enough to know if they will do a good job. Also, in addition to all your other tasks, you are now taking on role of manager.

The best way to handle the hiring decision, in the early stages, is to identify what parts of the work that you are doing are mechanical/rote and easy to replicate as well as tasks that you abhor and therefore avoid. These can be making travel arrangements, or maintaining an email list or posting to social media or doing your own bookkeeping etc. Each of these can be easily delegated and finding the right person isn’t as hard as you think. You can hire subcontractors at various marketplaces such as Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer.com and many others. This option can be great if only want to outsource a few tasks for which you don’t need a full time employee. Alternatively, if you do want someone who is dedicated to you and whose work schedule you can control, hiring an employee or more might be the better way to go. And contrary to popular belief, taking on employees is relatively straightforward (the administration of which can be fully outsourced at a relatively low cost).

In the short term, taking on help means that you will have more work as you have to find the right people and train them. In the long term, however, not only will this help make running your business easier, but it can also make it more profitable and ultimately improve your quality of life.

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