How to know what you should delegate next

One of the primary reasons why business owners struggle to delegate effectively: They simply don’t know where to start.

As a founder, you have an overwhelming number of responsibilities, which promotes inaction.

The solution is to start with only a few low-skill responsibilities that you’re spending a lot of time doing. This will get you the most amount of time back in the most cost-effective way.

How do you identify these few low-skill but time-sucking responsibilities? By doing this simple 5-step exercise I call the task auditor. In less than 10 minutes you should be able to identify the 3 ongoing tasks you need to delegate next.

1. Initial Brain Dump

The first step is to list out all of the things you’re responsible for on an ongoing basis. Rough notes and bullets are encouraged.

2. Rank Them By Time

The next step is to rank them by the amount of time you spend executing each process/responsibility every week.

Again, rough estimates are fine. The whole point is to identify the things taking up most of your time.

3. Determine Labor Cost

The third step is to identify the ones that would be most cost-effective to delegate. In other words, measure the skill set required to execute each process in question.

If you can pay someone <$20/hour to complete the task, label it green.

4. Identify The Top 3

Now that you have a list of your ongoing responsibilities, ranked by the amount of time they take to complete, and those that would be more cost-effective to delegate labeled green… It’s time to identify which ones to delegate first.

Start with the ones that take most of your time. Go down the list and underline or highlight the ones you labeled in green until you have identified the top 3.

These are the first 3 responsibilities you need to delegate ASAP. It shouldn’t be expensive and will instantly remove you from these lower ROI (but important) tasks.

5. Create A Simple SOP

How do you begin to delegate? Create an SOP by recording yourself executing the process the next time you’re doing it.

Then, clarify how often it has to get done, what done looks like, and provide them with the SOP video.

If you try this exercise, feel free to share with me your results.

See you all next Thursday 👋

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