The True Cost Of Not Delegating In Your Business

We should be delegating the lower value tasks and spending more time on the higher value tasks . If you want to keep scaling your business or scale more quickly , you have got to spend time on the activities that are worth more to your business .

Hey there , kwayjo here , and if my voice is new to you , I'm the new co-host of the Art of Online Business podcast , and today was supposed to be a follow fix Friday episode , but I really felt that someone needed to hear this .

So we're going to take a little turn here and talk about a problem that a lot of us and I say us actually including me online course creators we have , which is that we spend way too much time on the business and we end up sacrificing business growth because of this thing .

And if you're watching on the YouTube channel , hi , my face is getting better After this crazy , unfortunately lackluster bike crash that I had that smashed my face in and I had surgery above and below my eye , broken nose , fracture on the orbital floor , which is the part of the bone that holds up your eyeball .

I'm slowly improving , but it's taking a lot longer than I thought . So this topic it came up as I had a coaching call last Friday and I'll kind of lay out the issue , which is we tend to be , as online course creators and coaches of braid let's just call it fear . We don't want to delegate out responsibility . And I get it .

I know what you're thinking because I have thought the same thing . My team couldn't possibly do it as good as me , and maybe that's true . Maybe they could do it better . So I've been reading this book called buy back your time . It's by Dan Martell and he says don't hire to grow your business , hire to buy back your time .

Successful people aren't doing what they love because they're rich . They're rich because they learned to do what they love and only what they love . And so , like I titled this episode , the price of time whatever course creator needs to delegate now , because what are we really sacrificing when we think we're working on our business and doing all the things .

So , for context , I was having a funnel fixing call last Friday at least at the recording of this episode last Friday with a client it's actually a husband and wife duo , a dynamic duo and during the call they ask a question what did I think about them setting up a second website ? And my initial thoughts were , huh , this is intriguing .

Let's ask some more questions and , you know , through some more back and forth , it came out that they really just weren't happy with the authority and the online SEO authority and the brand authority that the first website was building for them , and they wanted to have a second website that was more dedicated to the course side of the operations .

And so , after a few more questions , it just really became clear they wanted to rank higher in Google , build more authority and increase organic leads Great . So since they thought their current website wasn't accomplishing that goal , we started to explore well , what could accomplish that goal ? Well , what could accomplish that goal ?

And so now this business had had success with their blogs .

But the issue , the thing I started bringing up with this couple , was that both the husband and the wife were writing the blogs , and the husband was even learning how to do keyword research and learning how to do SEO in an attempt to make his blogs rank higher , and that's good right .

But the wife is the CEO of the business and the husband also has his own business . Their time is super valuable and they had come to me . I managed their ads , and for some clients I manage ads . Those clients also choose to have me do funnel fixing calls with them .

It's another service that I offer on top of ads management , and so they had come to me to help them fix their sales funnel , and they really want to scale their business , and so I proposed and they agree that we just started exploring solutions where they could have someone else do the SEO , someone else learn the SEO , do the SEO , buy that person a course

and have that other person write the blog so that the husband and wife CEO team could devote more time to higher value tasks that only they could do , tasks like creating a webinar , optimizing their sales funnel , making connections with people for future collaborations or even improving on their programs messaging .

So I'd given them a suggestion how about they find a ghostwriter ? And the wife's first response was because she's a published author . She's like , well , but then that person wouldn't be able to write in my voice . I'm like , well , that's true , but they could . That's what ghostwriters do . And I was like , by the way , you wrote a book , right ?

Did you have an editor ? She's like , yeah , I'm like , well , what did the editor do to the words that you were writing ? And she outlined a few things . I'm like I bet that changed your voice a little bit . So we kept on going and I thought , well , what if you found a writer inside of your current community who's familiar with her field of expertise ?

And then maybe the wife could end up dictating blog article ideas , or even blog articles that just float to her mind , because she's full of them , right At length into a voice note and then let the writer take the SEO course , pull together the blog article and publish it .

But I want to go past just giving them the advice and I want to let you , the listener , know that I relate . I could definitely relate . So here's something that happened to me last week . I am growing a YouTube channel . It's youtubecom slash quajo Q-U-A-Y-J-O . You can go down to the description in the show notes and find the link and follow me there .

I'm actually starting a hundred days to a hundred K month challenge . Because of a lot of the issues that I had from the accident where I can't actually look at a screen for more than three hours and it's really hampered my ability to work nine hour days . I'm admitting that I used to work that much , but I can't do it anymore .

So I'm forced to revisit how the business is structured and how I'm spending my time , and so my take on this challenge is that I'll devote the first hundred minutes of every day to the highest possible revenue generating activity and we'll see how close I get to a hundred K months in new and in new revenue . So back to this YouTube trailer .

I had my video editor make a YouTube trailer for me and after the third revision I got it and I just I knew I could do better .

I was happy with it , but not super happy , and maybe you relate where you've had somebody in your business do something that you've done well before and that you really know how to do and you're just like I could do this better .

And I can because in my previous business that got destroyed by the pandemic elementary Chinese I had edited at least 150 videos on my other YouTube channel and grown that channel to like 21,000 subscribers not big , but not small and so I really know the visual style that I like .

So it was 730 pm on a I believe it was a Thursday night and I knew I'd already pushed past my work limit . And why was I even working that late ? Because I have to take long naps , because all the trauma that happened to my face .

I can't just work three hours , I have to do like one hour and just lay down , or two hours and just lay down , because my face is screaming at me and the pain goes beyond what I can control with medication . So it's like 730 pm and I look at his video . It's just way too late at night .

I know that I shouldn't just sit there and edit the video , but how I gave in to the temptation , I edited the video anyway . You know it was good . My edit my trailer . You can go look at it on my YouTube channel . It was better than what he produced . It's not like I did a side-by-side comparison .

Ken , if you're watching this , you did a good job , I just wanted it better . My wife came in after her Bible study that night it was like closer to 10 o'clock now . She asked if she could go to sleep . I realized the price of time . I was proud of my new YouTube channel trailer . But what was the price I paid ? Because she was waiting .

She wanted to tell me about her day . Here's the kicker she already saw the previous YouTube trailer and she liked it . She thought it was fine . According to her , I could have uploaded that Basically , the editor had already done 70 to 80% of what I could do myself and was spending that time really going to make the trailer .

I mean , was the trailer that much better ? You can be the judge of that . But what did I sacrifice ?

You know , I sacrificed some moments with my wife , some time listening to her kind of unwind and tell me what was going on with our two kids and all the things that I kind of missed during the day , because I'm in bed recuperating from this whole surgery and this trauma to the area around my eye .

So I thought I would kind of guide you down a little thought experiment and leave you with some encouragement before I finish this episode . So I want you to think about it like this we all fall into this trap of just not trusting our team to delegate .

Yet we want to grow and scale our business to higher heights , and we don't want to be the one working all the time in our business . So like . The one thing I notice is that , as a high earning online course creator , we should be delegating the lower value tasks and spending more time on the higher value tasks . Here's this thought experiment .

Think of it like this you have a goal to make $100,000 in one month , but you can only work a maximum of 40 hours per week . That's four weeks , so 160 hours . And in this experiment , multiplication does not exist , it's only addition , as in you can only add up the value of what you do every hour in order to reach 100K . Right , that's the only way .

So if you want to arrive at $100,000 , you would need to spend each hour doing a task that's worth at least $625 , because my calculator says 100,000 divided by 160 is 625 . So that would be if you just kept going at that hourly rate .

That would be $625 per hour If you spent your time on $10 an hour tasks and when I say $10 an hour task , this comes from this concept that you could do a time audit right , and some of these tasks would be $10 an hour tasks , others would be $100 an hour tasks . Well , yet others would be $1,000 an hour and even $10,000 an hour tasks .

But if you only spent your time on $10 an hour tasks Since you only had 160 hours you would never make it to generate that 100,000 at the end of four weeks .

And $10 an hour tasks those are like reconciling your books , recording all your expenses into QuickBooks , your accounting software or at least that's my accounting software Creating social media graphics , editing your videos or even responding to the endless stream of customer service emails that you can't arrive at 100K that way .

In fact , even if you spent your time on $100 an hour tasks , the maximum you would be able to generate would be $16,000 , because you had 160 hours at $100 an hour , right , and so examples of $100 tasks more valuable than the $10 an hour tasks would be writing ad copy or creating Facebook ad campaigns .

Side note , this is why Rick and I continually say if your business is already earning over $150,000 in annual gross revenue and you're running your own Facebook ads , it's probably time to hire out that activity , and I'm not just saying so selfishly , because I'm a Facebook ads manager .

What I'm telling you is is , if you want to keep scaling your business or scale more quickly . You have got to spend time on the activities that are worth more to your business . So what if you spent your time on $1,000 an hour tasks , or even $10,000 an hour tasks ? Then you could get to your 100K in a month in just 160 hours .

Again , you're not allowed to work overtime , so it's eight hour days , right , 40 hours a week .

So a $1,000 task or $1,000 per hour task would be something like creating a webinar , strategically planning it out , building a sales funnel , optimizing your sales funnel , prioritizing your schedule so that you're spending time on the things that move the needle in your business right . And the $10,000 an hour task ?

That would be like recording a podcast , like I'm doing right now , or delivering the webinar that you spent so much time planning out , or even hiring the right team member to your team , or doing public speaking in your subject matter expertise , or guest podcasting . And so the temptation is to do it all alone , since you are talented I mean we are talented .

I mean , heck , we built our businesses from zero . You can do all the things inside your business . You've clocked way more hours than anyone on your team has , and you know your business inside and out . So I just wanted to encourage you , your team members .

They don't have to be as good as you at every task that they're doing that you could be doing in your business . If they can do something 70% as well as you could do it . Let's take a $10 hour in task . Then you spent your time doing that task . It's worth $10 an hour . If they can do it 70% as well as you , that's good enough .

That means now their hour was worth $7 an hour . You can take that hour that you got back because you were willing to let go and delegate , and you can spend your time doing a $1,000 an hour task or $10,000 an hour task , and that , my friend , is the way to scale your business .

It's what , quite transparently , I have been forced to do because of my accident and now I can't my eye can't tolerate screen time , so I've really had to take . Well , I've been forced to just lay in bed and use audio notes to communicate with my team , and I've watched them take the baton . I've watched them take the SOPs that we've made .

I've watched them take on a lot more responsibility . I've watched them start to think like I've been thinking in their individual roles and it's been quite freeing . Yeah , it's been scary and I understand you might be a bit fearful too . What if they mess it up ? Well , I have a four year old . He's past the toddler stage . He can walk now .

What if I held his hand all the time when he was learning how to walk ? What if I didn't let him try on his own

? You know how babies are when they kind of get up on their two legs and they fall over and they're so cute . But how many times does the baby fall over before the baby ends up learning how to walk and become a toddler ? And wouldn't it hinder if the parent helped them out a hundred percent of the time ?

I would wait here to say yes , and that's the encouragement I want to leave you with Take the leap . Maybe the next step for you is to hire that first team member . Maybe your next step is because you already have several team members , to give them a bit more autonomy .

Maybe spend some time working on some key performance indicators and let them understand how they can function in their role independently and self manage themselves according to those KPIs . I hope this finds you well . Be blessed , and I'll see you in the next episode .