Effective Delegation for Entrepreneurial Businesses

This is the Momentum podcast.

There is almost a universal truth about being a visionary entrepreneur. We are terrible at delegation. I can't tell you how often I work with somebody that says, Oh, I've tried to hire people. I tried to get an assistant. I tried to get help and I just can't do it and I'm stuck. There is a way that you can delegate and inventory what you should be delegating and start creating the foundation of your company. Get yourself out of the day to day, transfer more responsibility to your team and create way more momentum in everything that you do.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast. Made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution. And we always will be.

In my experience, visionary entrepreneurs are challenged by delegation. It's hard for us to delegate. It's hard for us to figure out how to get things off our plate. It's hard for us to let go of things. Letting go is one of the hardest things we do as a visionary. When you delegate, you literally let go of the outcome. You let somebody else do it if you're doing it right. And delegation is difficult because We have a hard time trusting. We have a hard time understanding how to delegate. We have a hard time understanding what we should delegate to. In fact, when you look at the vast majority of entrepreneurs and you ask, how do you delegate something? They will tell you, you give it to a person. Today, I want to go through a thinking process, a framework for delegation. So that you can start solving problems in your company and start delegating in a way that's much more dynamic and start getting things off your plate so that you can go from tactical in your business to more strategic so you can go from low value activities to more high value activities. You are the most important person in your business. The more productive we make you, the better everything will go. And so here are the four exits to a delegation.

Now, when I say exits to a delegation, here's what I mean. If you find that you're doing something in your business, if you find that there's a recurring issue in your business, if you find that you need more help in your business. If you find that there is any type of a challenge. I want you to start thinking about how do you delegate this thing so that it's off your plate. How do you delegate this issue? How do you correct this issue so that it no longer becomes a problem? Now when I say there's four exits to a delegation, the first one is the one we all know. You can delegate something to a person. And so if there's something that's on your task list, if there's something you're doing every week, if there's something, an outcome that you're driving in the business, you can take that outcome, sit with a person, tell them the outcome you want, explain to them how you've been doing things, let them know that they can figure things out on their own as well, you delegate that to that person and with and then you check in and make sure that it's getting done and it's being done correctly. Now to delegate to a human being, I would suggest that you create a Visual chart, really simple flow chart of what you're delegating so that the two of you can say, here's what it is, and this is how we're going to do it. And we have clarity around the delegation. And when you have that flow chart, you know exactly what that person's going to do. And then let them know that if they make any changes to how they're doing something, they should update that visual. So we know exactly what's going on. Here's why this is so important with delegation to a person. When you delegate to a person, we want to make sure we have documentation in case something happens with that person, somebody else can jump in and maintain that delegation and someone else can jump in and make sure that you're still getting exactly what you need and nothing in your company falls through the cracks. If we don't delegate with documentation, we can end up in a place where things don't get done. Now, people is only one of four places that you can delegate to.

The second place that you can delegate is to a process. Now, let's say that you're doing something over and over again in your company. You can build an automated process so that you don't have to do that anymore. So simple example is let's say you go into your Gmail every day and you're clearing out spam and you're clearing stuff out and it's just stuff that you're never going to look at. Set up some rules and conditions in your Gmail so that you have a process that's deleting your spam. I haven't seen spam in my inbox in forever because it all goes to the same folder. Sometimes I have to go find something in there, but man, it's a lot easier than having all the noise in my inbox. So if there's an issue in your company, a recurring issue, something you're doing, you build, you can build an automation, you can build a process, you can hand that process off to somebody else.

So we can delegate something to a person. Often it is combined with a process, and then we can also delegate something to a project. So if there's something going on that you're doing, and you want to be able to delegate it to somebody or get it off of your plate, what often happens is that as visionaries, we try and make everything perfect so we can hand it off to somebody. We try and document it all, make sure we have it all, make sure it's all clear, and then that way we can get someone else to do it. Instead, just create a project so that you document the process so you delegate to a person. And so you can delegate to a project that then creates the process and then you hand it off to a person. If there's something larger that you're doing right now. At one point, we had a business where I was doing 100 percent of the speaking and we were doing 20 or 30 events a year. In our second year, we did 200 events. There was no way I could do everything. First I had to delegate to a project to get Speakers hired and to be able to be the old, not no longer be the only person who could speak for our company. Then we built a process through which everyone who would speak for our company would follow so that they could speak, show up like I did have consistency and make things happen. And then I delegated that to actual speakers. But the first thing we did was we had to open up a project so that we could get everything done and make sure that the delegation process was in place.

Now the last exit to a delegation is a policy. If you have an issue that's coming up in your business over and over again, if you have a challenge that you get key, keep getting interrupted with and policies can be things that affect people internally. Like you have team member policies, employee policies. It can be externally, you have customer policies, you have customer service policies, you have what you will do, what you won't do, and it can be even with vendors or with partners. You have policies around how you will work with vendors and how your team's allowed to work with vendors. And so if you have a recurring issue, you put a policy in place. This is a weird one, but years ago, when we were doing hundreds of events a year, we didn't realize this, but there was hotels that were sending expensive gifts to our events team, and the events, we didn't know this, but our events team actually went to a concert here in Austin with a hotel, and they rented them a limousine, and they went out and got into a VIP suite, and it was, like, a lot of fun for our team members. But then when we were negotiating hotel rates, we noticed that our team wasn't really negotiating. And all of our rates went up, especially here in Austin with the people that they were working with. They were 20 or 30 percent higher than they'd been before. So we went over and started talking to them, and we found out they'd been getting gifts. And being, getting special treatment. And they'd built a relationship with the person they're negotiating with. Or let's be really clear, that person built a relationship with them. Was trying to get reciprocity so they would stop negotiating. And that happened. And so we had to put a policy in place. That any gift anyone in our company received from anyone associated with the company had to be reported to us. We didn't even put a minimum on it. We wanted to make sure it was reported to us so we understood what was going on and we could understand the dynamic. That's just one simple policy that we put in place. In my business today, I have a policy that if we need to buy something for the company, we have to compare three viable options and have details from each one. And then we can buy something. The reason I put that policy in place is because I want people doing research and understanding what's available. And if you'll get, you look at three viable solutions, just coming to those three solutions is going to give you more ideas about how to solve an issue. It's going to show you what's available in the marketplace. It's going to show you what you could do, and that will increase your confidence in making that decision.

I use these three exits to a delegation all the time. I delegate to a person, I delegate to the building of a process. If it's something big, I delegate to a project. And if something recurring that comes up over and over again, I make sure that I have a policy so that it does not come back to me. Because here's my goal as a visionary. And what I think your goal as a visionary should be is to get out of the day to day of your business. As visionaries, We are big picture thinkers. As visionaries, we are solution creators. As visionaries, we're that small percentage of the population that gets up every morning, goes into the future, creates a new reality, then comes back to the present and demands it becomes real. That is where our focus should be. That is where our energy should be. We should be delegating everything we possibly can so that we have as much time in the day so that we can fill that visionary capacity. And when we're done delegating, when we can get as much as possible off of our plate, that allows us to be a true visionary, which means stepping back. Looking at your company ecosystem, looking at the projects that are being created, that are being executed, the policies that are being put in place, the processes that are being documented, the projects that are being, rolled out, and the people who are on the team, and you can ask yourself, where can I help the most? Where can I provide the most leverage? If I do need to, do I need to provide leverage here? And then that way, as a visionary, you're supporting your team. But you're not in the day to day, you're not buried in God of minutes, you're not totally overwhelmed, just trying to run the business, the more time and space you can give yourself, the more spaciousness you can give yourself, the more time you can create just for stillness, the more you will be a visionary, the more you will hear your intuition, the more you will hear the voice of the divine telling you what you should do next, and the more you will start seeing How everything around you is working in your best interest and moving you forward and making things happen for you.

See, we miss intuition. We miss synchronicity. We miss those downloads because we're going so fast and doing so much in our business that we cut all that energy off. When we create time and space, when we have time for stillness, when we spend some time in neutral or meditate, when we do some breath work, when we have those times, that is when we open the channel to our higher self. That's when we get downloads from the divine. That's when we get intuitive hits telling us exactly what we need to do. The more you can get off of your plate, the more you run your business through the energetic of intuition and inspiration and the downloads that you know are going to move you forward. And the more caught in the day to day you are, the more it will be logic and heady and moving in a direction that you're trying to figure out. And so many people do that over and over again. They don't follow intuition. They're moving so fast. They don't have time to look up and see where they're going. And then they finally get to a destination. And when they get there, they realize it's not a place they want to be. I don't want that to happen to you.

Delegate. Delegate to a person, a project, a process, or a policy. Get things off of your plate. Move through that delegation so that you can create massive momentum in the business by having time and space to be the visionary that I know you are. When it comes to time and space, I am obsessed with giving visionaries time and space. I am a visionary and just like you, if you're a visionary entrepreneur, I'm also an artist, let's be real. Visionaries are artists. My art, my canvas is my business. My art is this podcast. My art is the information that I share that the frameworks that we put out, the life changing content that we have for people. And as an artist, I need time and space and stillness. And so I created a system that allows a visionary entrepreneur to run their business, their entire business, in about 40 hours a year, you can go to 40houryear.co and download the framework now and see how if you put the right process structure and routine in place, not overnight, but faster than you think you can get there. You can run your business in 40 hours a year. 40houryear.com. Check it out. And I'd love to know what you think. ​