Build Your Income and Freedom Through Delegation

It’s a truth I’ve known for a long time, but life inevitably veers me away a little. If you want to grow your business and increase the freedom you have to do what you want, when you want…you HAVE TO delegate. 

This episodes dives into what to delegate and why - and how it can dramatically affect the success of your business and the time freedom it gives you.

MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST:

VANetworking.com - a place to connect with virtual assistants that can help you in your business.

Episode: When it Feels Like the World is On Your Shoulders

Episode with Lynn Terry: Appreciating the Gifts of Your Relationships

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's a truth I've known for a really long time, but life inevitably veers me away a little. If you want to grow your business and increase the freedom you have to do what you want when you want, you have to delegate. I'm Alice Seba, your co-host of Lifestyle Self-Made, where we talk about building the life that you want while honoring the important priorities that you have. We live in this age where this goal is more attainable than ever, but with so many distractions in that same world, it's really easy to veer off that path. So let's talk about this delegation. Whether it's in your personal life or in your business, we are offered many opportunities to delegate. And in a moment, I'll explain how this delegation actually helps you grow income and ultimately gives you so much more of that lifestyle self-made freedom in your life. In our personal life, we have kids, spouses, family, and community members that can take on tasks instead of us going into full control freak mode or making ourselves into martyrs. Now that's probably a whole different episode. In fact, we have talked about stuff like that, more personal side of it, like when it in our episode called Feels Like the World Is On Our Sh Your Shoulders. And also in our episode with Lynn Terry about appreciating the gifts of the relationships in your life. So let's get back to the business part. In our business or work, right? We also, if you're working a career, we still have opportunities to delegate, whether it's co-workers or community members who have a vested interest in growing our common goals or the people you hire to do work for you. And if you want to be the CEO of your business and your life, you have to hire people. It's not even really an option. No person truly in charge of their business can wear all the hats like customer support, website development, social media manager, product developer, copywriter, bookkeeper, errand runner. And the list goes on and it's actually crazy to try. And I will say that all my biggest periods of growth in my business and being truly in charge of my schedule have been when I ramp up the delegation. Sure, I'm good at a lot of stuff. And I do believe I do a lot of stuff better than a lot of people, right? And you may relate to that too. Control freak stuff. But when I'm bogged down in tasks, I can't plan the bigger picture or use my talents, like my real talents, where they're best suited. And that's something important to remember. We always think, oh, we can do it ourselves. We know how to do it. It takes too long to explain. But the thing is that when it's repetitive tasks, things that are being done over and over again, you can train someone to do that. And you only have to train them and build your documentation once. So you train someone, you document it. And then if that person moves on, you have the documentation for the next person. So you are not spending all your time training. You are freeing up your time. Now, in full transparency, because why I'm bringing this up is the mainstream. I went through this period. I told you that, oh, sometimes I veer off the track. I'm always delegating. We always have team members. But in the in the last few years, the mainstream adopt to the mainstream adoption of AI presented some challenges for a business, right? So we sell private label rights content and people weren't buying it as readily, or they wanted something else. They were experimenting with their own content creation, right? And the costs to create PLR as we were was really big. It was expensive. Everything was done by hand and by and so we were bobbing and weaving, trying to figure out what our place was in this AI world. And in that process, we had to thin out our team for a while. And I personally started taking on a lot of tasks that would otherwise have been given to team members. And I've been through this before in 2008, when the value of the U, I'm in Canada and we sell in US dollars. So when the value of the US dollar went so far south, the amount of money my business was bringing into Canada was like fell dramatically, even if the sales stays consistently for a while, but they also did go down because people were struggling economically during that recession. And again, at that time, I started taking on more tasks in my business and had less time for the big picture and my very best skills. But what got me out of that was regaining my bearings and figuring out the new direction and delegating more. Because sometimes you do have to sit back and figure out, okay, we can't just keep throwing money at this. We have to figure it out. So in the latest AI debacle, I kept reminding myself to delegate. So back to more present tense in this latest AI debacle, I kept reminding myself to delegate. But my struggle was what do I delegate to make our business more profitable? For many years, I had delegated customer service, correspondence, bookkeeping, accounting, product creation, funnel creation, and tons more. But, and I still continue the bookkeeping and accounting. I won't touch it. Someone else has to do that, and customer service as well, always. But now I wasn't sure what products to create or the funnels that were needed to support them. But I continue to delegate those basics, customer service, correspondence, keeping the books, because those things are laborious and things that really keep you from the big picture. So it's a process to figure out what to delegate. But for you as a business owner, at minimum, if you want this freedom, you need to delegate your customer service and correspondence and technical tasks that you don't know how to do. That might mean bookkeeping and accounting, and really it probably should, unless your business is bookkeeping and accounting. Because don't, and I want to get onto this customer service thing because I get a lot of pushback when I say this. But do not fool yourself into thinking your customer service needs your personal touch. It doesn't. There are professionals who can add the personal touch for you. And how it frees your mind and eliminates your stress is super powerful. Most customers are amazing, but the difficult ones are a drain that take your focus and time away. And let's be real the more customer service and correspondence your business needs, the more money you're earning to be able to invest in it. So, in my humble opinion, gate through 24 years of experience, the moment you start to handle all your customer service, the more you put yourself in a downward spiral. So even in lean times, you should be delegating this. You need a buffer between yourself and the demands of your customers. And that can be done by hiring a professional virtual assistant or hiring somebody you know, or maybe you have an older child who could use some extra money. But because otherwise, you'll be dropping the more important work you're doing to attend to the larger customer needs. Customer service is like, is like helping them in the moment with the things they want. Anybody can do that. Anybody can train to do that. But you are doing the overall big picture on serving the customers in a grander sense, like what kind of products they need, what the overall message of your business is. Customer needs are important. The day-to-day needs are also important. And that's why they should be handled by someone else. You're handling the big picture. Now, if you need a virtual assistant, you can check out my friend Tanya Sutherland's site at VM, where she connects virtual assistants with businesses. You can also do that through word of mouth. You can also train, like I said, somebody that you know to do that. Obviously, you have to be careful about your business, blending the business and personal and making sure it's the right person. But again, when you're training people, document it. All you have to do, don't just throw it into an email or something like that. Document it on a doc. Like even if you write it in an email telling them what to do, write it somewhere in a document you can access every time so that you can keep bringing that documentation back as your team grows or someone leaves or something like that. So now let's talk about the other very practical ways. Delegation helps you reach your income and lifestyle self-made goals. So when someone is, this is the best part. And it's it's such a wonderful human thing, right? When you hire somebody, they're helping you, but you're also helping them, right? That they're earning an income, you're getting stuff done for your business. And when someone is dependent on work for you, you have an obligation to get organized and create the work. And when you do that, your business is building things and growing. And of course, you have to be strategic, but this obligation is really built-in accountability that you might be missing if you're just working on your own. For me, our business recently has found a new groove to get fully back on track. So I knew I had to get a ton of this stuff off my plate. I'm like, this is enough. We got to get back on this. And I also have to plan ahead instead of working day to day and trying to figure out what's happening now, what's happening now. We want products and promotions ready ahead of time so that I can focus on making those promotions a success. So as I was gearing up to do that, I found I had this newfound motivation, right? And as I was getting things, I literally worked 14 hours this past Sunday to get a head start on this. And I know, come on, I know you're thinking you're Alice, I don't want to work 14-hour days. And my goodness, neither do I. And I actually can't even think of a day I've done that. I don't think it's ever happened, honestly. I've never pulled all-nighters in university or in my business. But my sister's coming for a visit this weekend, and I have a bunch of guests coming throughout the summer, really looking forward to it. I was just so motivated to get ahead. And our amazing Melody, you know her if you've contacted us directly before. She's our frontline of customer service, and she's amazing. But she was willing to put in the work. She's just throw it at me, Alice, and I'll do it. And I'm like, yes, okay, let's do this. Let's get this off my plate. I can enjoy my time with my sister. And Melody will be helping us work ahead while I'm doing that. And that is really what it's about. Obviously, we work hard and we decide when we work. I didn't have, I could have stretched that 14 hours over a few days. I would have been fine. I was just really excited to do it. And even though you want time off, you just have to do a little bit of work before, or you got to do extra work before. And that is freedom, right? Yes, it's true. If you have a regular job, your employer gives you just the time off and you don't have to worry about your work stuff in most cases. Some careers you do have to. But this is the ultimate because you can do it every week. Decide, I don't want to work Monday, Tuesday. I want to go somewhere in the afternoon here, I want to do this, right? It is absolute wonderful freedom. So I have found so much clarity, focus, and motivation when I delegate. Of course, you don't want to do this willy-nilly, and you do need clarity before you delegate too much. But if you're trying to do to grow your business, do yourself a favor and invest your profits before you pay yourself or part of what you'd pay yourself, and get a virtual assistant who will answer emails, customer service, and do tasks when your schedule is occupied. You'll be amazed at how little time it takes you to do these things. Because to us, everything seems to take so long because we are occupied by way too many things to do. And our emotional involvement makes things linger in our mind, making it take up way more space in our lives. Plus, when you hire an assistant to do customer service and correspondence, you're paying them for more work when you are creating more business. So it makes perfect sense. If your business is slow, your VA bill will be low. Your VA bill will be bigger when you get more business and you can afford it. Personally, I never let go of delegation and never will. But there are times when we cut back as we regroup, but that regrouping process is critical. And you'll remind yourself that there is light at the end of this tunnel. I have to do this. You cannot be everything in your business, and you should never try. You're the CEO for your lifestyle self-made. And the sooner you embody it, the greater heights you'll soar to. If you'd like any advice on how to delegate, what to delegate, or what direction you should take, let me know. Comments or area is always open. That's it for me for today. And I hope that I've given you some food for thought. I think it's so wonderful that we can give people opportunities to work, and it can also give us opportunities for more income and freedom. And it's a wonderful thing for everyone.