QUESTION: How do I determine what I want to delegate?
The Client Experience
I had a client, a guy named Bob with a business doing almost $2 million. But, he waited to hire an admin for almost 8 years. I constantly stressed how much it was costing him, physically costing him not to have an administrator. He “yea’d” me to death. Eventually, he hired somebody, and about a year later, he was “fun angry” with me because I did not push him harder to hire that person earlier. He went through the whole laundry list of everything that freed him up. This person was arranging the interviews and double-checking things. You can have an administrator do a whole slew of things that are not in your core competency, even some baseline research.
The Bigger Game Transformer
The original question was: how do I determine what I want to delegate? I learned a great exercise in The Strategic Coach program, developed by Dan Sullivan. It is so simple that I can teach it here.
Everything you do, personally and professionally, falls into one of those three categories. It is annoying, just okay, or it is captivating and motivating.
My experience with most recruiting firm owners, whether solo or firm owners, is that they only spend 5% to 10% of their day in the category captivating and motivating. This is why the business becomes a grind.
Transition to Captivating and Motivating
I did not know this exercise, but I did remnants of it 20-something years ago. I took myself off a desk because many of the baseline functions of running a desk became irritating. But I was confused because I was good at taking datasheets, taking searches, and running my desk. A lot of people confuse being excellent at something with it being fascinating.
Some of the things you do that you are excellent at are fascinating, but if you are honest with yourself, does the execution of the task excite you?
An Example
Marketing was never captivating or motivating for me, specifically marketing calls. So I hired marketing coordinators, people that would develop leads for me. What was captivating and motivating for me was closing somebody that had an opening. I enjoyed taking them through the process to line them up as a client that would hire us with money upfront, walking the client through their problem, their pain points, what our solution was, and negotiating the agreement.
When I took myself off a desk, I never stopped doing that. I did that with my team members. My team members would bring in the searches they had. They would set up appointments, and we would have a conversation with the account executive and the client, and I would give the opening back to the account executive to do the fulfillment on, and they were all great recruiters too.
The Challenge
There are no hard and fast rules as to what is fascinating and motivating for you and what is annoying. I would challenge you to keep that piece of paper at your desk over the next few days. Every time you start a new task, record it in one of the three categories. Be honest with yourself. That is the first step. You will come up with a bunch of stuff under annoying if you do it the right way.
Be careful that the captivating and motivating things energetically are things you love doing. One of the tests, if you are doing it, and you look up at the clock and you are like, where did the time go? And you have energy. You are not fatigued.
After a few days, you will have a list of three categories, and you can look at everything under annoying. I would posit to you, to delegate it within 90 days.
All of our situations are different. We all live in different sized homes, states, and countries with varying labor laws.
This process works. If something is annoying, there is a way to delegate it.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your recruitment business:
- Grab a free copy of my Retainer Blueprint
It’s the exact, step-by-step process of getting clients to give you money upfront. https://therecruiteru.com/
- Join the Recruiter Think Tankand connect with firm owners who are scaling, too. It’s our Facebook community where smart recruiters learn to make more money and get more freedom. https://www.facebook.com/groups/there…
