As an entrepreneur, the thought of delegating a job can be scary for many reasons. one of those reasons is because of the cost associated with outsourcing a task, if the result from getting someone to do a job does not return a profit then it becomes a loss. In a similar way if you pay someone to do something and they do a bad job then it means that you either have to try resolve the issue with them, find someone else to do the task or you may have to end up doing it yourself.
Starting your business likely came from a passion and things that we are passionate about are typically things that we do well. If you wanted to grow your business and was to outsource a task because you couldn't keep up with the work load, you may be tempted thinking that you should just do the work because you do it well.
What to delegate?
The best thing to delegate is the thing that you do not know how to do because you lack the expertise or perhaps you know how to do it but wouldn't be able to do it as good as it needs to be. Your weaknesses are someone else's strengths and so finding that person who can deal with the things that you struggle with can make your business run smooth.
Things you do well, you should do yourself, after all, the work that you are doing may be the reason your business is great in the first place.
When you delegate a task to a person, company or software you must remember that you are spending money in the hopes of getting a return on investment. Whether that be monetary benefit or another value like reputation, credibility or brand awareness. A good investment will cost you a small amount compared to the return you will make.
Tasks that I outsource
A common task that I outsource is photography and the reason is because even though I am good at taking photographs of our products, a professional photographer with years of experience is much better and when she takes photos, it sells more products and the service pays for itself in the return of product sales.
We pay a company called Rev to write the closed captions for our YouTube videos. This service costs about £1.24 per minute of video and the result is that we have professional captions on our videos, this improves the SEO value and helps the video reach a larger audience gaining more views and earning more money. I could do this but the captions would not look as good and doing it myself would mean that my energy is taken away from doing the things that I care and am passionate about.
On the other hand, If you delegate jobs that are not income generating, then you are just losing money. This is also known as paying for a liability.
