You will hear me say it over and over and over again. You will likely see it elsewhere too. You NEED to start delegating.
As a one person show, you will soon run out of time, energy and creativity to continue growing your business. Burn out will happen, making you far less able to be innovative and creative.
But, here is the thing. Delegating without a plan will likely just waste your money.
So, how do you figure out what and how to delegate?
I'm sure there is no one size fits all plan that solves this for everyone, but here is a strategy that works for me.
I like to do these on sticky notes and then place them on a table or wall based on the day of the week, so that I can see what the workflow for each day actually looks like.
Step 1
Make a list of all the weekly projects that need to happen.
Include things like launches, shipping, receiving inventory, quality control, overall marketing, etc.
Place each "Project" on the day of the week it needs to happen.
Step 2
For each project, make a list of associated tasks. For example if you do a Friday Launch, you may need to create an event, source and order inventory, create graphics, post daily hype leading up to it, update products in Shopify, take marketing photos, post on instagram, etc.
Put EACH task on its own sticky note and start by placing those notes on the day the item must be done.
Once you have gone through all your weekly projects, look at your days and your personal schedule and adjust as needed. For example if you have less childcare on Wednesday, or a longer day at work, you probably need to shift some of those tasks to Tuesday (or earlier).
Next, look for tasks that can be batched. For example, can you create all the events for the week on one day? Can you schedule engagement posts on one day of the week?
Step 3
For any daily marketing that you do, create a sticky note for each. For example, I try to send a daily e-mail to both potential clients and current clients. I have a sticky note for each, and on that sticky note I include details that need to be included weekly based on the schedule I created above.
Next, I go through and make a sticky note of each social media post that needs to be made for each day to communicate weekly events, etc.
I place these on the day they need to be made.
These posts are then put into a typed chart of daily content. I will batch and schedule as many of these in advance as I possibly can, but some posts include links, etc. and need to actually be posted at that time.
Step 4
If you are feeling a smidge overwhelmed, take a deep breath. What you are looking at is why you are overwhelmed. The reality is that you are likely trying to do WAY TOO MUCH right now.
But, you are on the right track to improving your situation.
Take a marker and put a star on the tasks that you HATE doing or the tasks that you often "forget" to do. Those are the things that you should figure out how to delegate first.
How do I delegate? Who do I delegate too?
Stay tuned for my next blog post on that...