The more you climb the activity ladder, the less tactical your personal activities are, and the more strategic the activities on your schedule become. Let’s put it another way: most entrepreneurs are making less than $100k/year. Some manage to build something sustainable and reach the 6-figure mark, but most of the time they’re still solopreneurs at this time. They don’t really own a business, they own a job. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that they’re destined to remain at this stage for as long as they only count on themselves.
Be warned: some stay there forever! They do make some money, but they can’t take off. There’s a ceiling they’ll never burst through because there’s only so many things one person can do. Then there are business owners who manage to pass this critical stage: they hit the 6-figure mark in revenue and their companies take off, because they start to delegate efficiently.
What makes you succeed in the first place (your personal how-to SKILLS that allowed you to do everything you’ve done so far) is the very reason why you can’t grow anymore.
In school, we don’t learn how to delegate. We do everything ourselves, and delegating is cheating. That’s unfortunately the state of mind that most people maintain when growing up, whereas delegation is vital for business owners, because you can’t be everywhere doing everything. You need to conduct the orchestra. Unfortunately, school doesn’t teach how to be a business owner.
First, learn the difference between delegating down and delegating up.
>> Delegating down consists of choosing the right people to do the small things right. And I mean right. Not everything has to be perfect, so you can delegate those tasks to someone who might make some mistakes and won’t get the job done as well as if you handled it yourself. But this simple delegation frees you up and allows you to move on to higher value tasks that will bring you closer and faster to your grand vision.
It’s true that the one who makes fewer mistakes goes faster … to some extent. But there’s a ceiling. They can’t go further, because they’re alone. I want to show you which road to take at each junction, to avoid any ceiling or dead end, to help you realize your grand vision faster.
The ultimate goal of delegating down is to allow yourself to work on higher value tasks.
>> On the other hand, there are things for which you need delegation, precisely because you NEED perfection. It’s delegating up. For example, if your sales process includes ads, you need the VERY BEST people out there to run them to perfection.
Delegate down the activities that you can do perfectly but that are below your hourly wage; delegate up activities that are below your hourly wage but that you can’t do by yourself. In the beginning, while your hourly wage is blank, you do everything by yourself. Then as soon as you make some money, you start delegating down some low-value activities. When you make more money, you start to delegate up the more valuable activities.
You delegate down things that aren’t critical to people whose hourly rate is low, such as handling garbage, picking up the phone, accounting, or customer service. You delegate up things that are critical to people whose hourly rate is generally not cheap, such as sales, finance, or marketing.
Regarding the delegation of your marketing … you probably have fantastic marketing ideas. More often than not, business owners love marketing. Some of us are even great at it. If you’re among those, BRAVO! But from a certain point in time, around six figures in revenue, you’ll have to change the way you handle marketing. You’ll still DRIVE your business’s marketing, and you have numerous conversations about it on a STRATEGIC level, but you’ll DELEGATE UP the implementation!
Don’t try to figure out how Facebook ads or Google ads work, or you’ll get stuck there forever! Give the work to an expert who already knows exactly how it works, someone who’s able to implement your ideas within a day, where it would otherwise take you a month!
Delegate the HOW! Hence the importance of finding the right WHO, to delegate the HOW. You’re an entrepreneur, a businessperson, and are probably a concept person, so work on the big picture and delegate the rest. Don’t waste your time on the tech part! Think MACRO, not micro. People need you elsewhere.
If you’re EXCELLENT at implementing your marketing decisions, that is, if you already have tremendous results by working yourself on FB ads, email automation, SEO, YouTube ads, or whatever your specialty is, you can continue to do it by yourself for a certain period of time. But you’ll have to delegate it after a while, most certainly around the 7-figure revenue mark. Otherwise, you won’t be able to grow an 8-figure business.
THE RIGHT DELEGATION LADDER
If you’re really good at implementing your marketing ideas, take this time (between low 6-figure to 7-figure in revenue) to train somebody to your own standards. This way, you’re building your own team of elite employees. Now, if you’re not an expert in implementation, like most of us, and you reach the 6-figure stage, and you’re not sure you can afford to hire your first employees yet, then hire contractors.
Here’s the right process to find the best people to work for your business.
First: OUT-TASK. For one-time work, find somebody for one specific task. From the beginning, as soon as you make money, or if you already have money at the time you launch your business, invest in somebody to free up your time. Until you find a superstar, someone who delivers more than what you expect, continue to out-task to different professionals. Test them all until you find the real ultimate expert that you believe in, and be sure to invest in them for the long run.
Second: OUTSOURCE. Once you’ve found, say, the ultimate YouTube expert for your ads or a second-to-none designer who overdelivers, you hire them on a regular basis. You give them all your work. At the same time, continue to look for another of the same kind of ultimate expert in the same field, in case all of a sudden the one you work with can’t work with you anymore. It’s impractical to depend on a single person.
Third: HIRE them part time. Once you’ve tested this person on several different projects and established they’re consistent, if you’ll need their services for a longer duration, go ahead and hire them. Be sure you can afford a part-time employee, and you’ve enough visibility and money to provide them with a salary, maybe bonuses and health insurance for the forthcoming six months to one year. Go on salary.com to get an idea of how much to offer them, depending on their expertise and location.
At this stage, if you hire an employee, even part time, that could mean that you’re already outsourcing at least one hundred hours of work a month. I would say, generally, it’s best not to do so before you make $100k in revenue. Maybe even $150k, depending on your activity. My examples predominantly relate to service businesses or online businesses, but if you’re in the cleaning industry, for example, obviously you need to hire janitors much earlier.
On the other hand, if you’re a consultant, or an investment banker as I was, maybe you won’t need any employees before you make $500k. There’s a big difference, I know, but keep in mind the previous number; it’s more accurate. If you already outsource 100 hours per month for this very expertise, and you forecast at least the same amount of work for the next six months to one year, that’s a green light. When you have enough visibility and predictable revenue, and you’ve already tested somebody in the long run, and this person is great at what they do, hire them—even if it’s remotely.
I remember a discussion between Tony Robbins and Eben Pagan (the pioneer of modern-day marketing), when they mentioned the fact that some business owners had all their team, that is, dozens of employees, living and working everywhere around the world. We were in 2009, and it was an eye-opening concept to me. Since then, I don’t hesitate to hire people overseas and offer them full-time positions.
More than a decade later, this is the reality of work life for many people, a whole community comprising millions of digital nomads. Whether you hire somebody remotely or in person, congratulations! By hiring your first employee, you’re starting to build your business’s culture.
It’s important to still test a couple of freelancers simultaneously who are of a similar expertise. For two reasons:
You may ask, “How do you transition from a full-time contractor to a part-time employee? What do I do with all the work I have to get done?”
Simple. When you switch somebody from being a contractor to an employee, you cut their workload in half, because ideally, you’ll hire not one but two people. You mitigate the risk. Of course, this implies that you’ve been working with several contractors over a period of time, and a couple of them have been good enough to the extent that you plan to hire them.
So, you hire two people with the same expertise. After two to three months, one of them will be better anyway. That’s the one you’ll keep and offer a full-time contract. Or, if your company thrives with the help of both, that’s even better! Keep them both and increase their workload. Just remember the primary reason for doing so is to mitigate the risk.
Keep in mind that when you change the environment, people tend to act differently. When the constants are no longer the same, and when a contractor becomes an employee, their behavior can change. Fortunately, with this technique, you’re well poised to face any situation. The problem is, until the environment changes, you don’t know how they’ll behave; and they themselves don’t know how their behavior will be impacted. After two to three months in their position as employees, you’ll have a strong idea as to their real character and integrity.
Here’s a reminder of what to look for in employees:
If one has spirit and results but isn’t loyal, keep them at a middle management level, but don’t promote them to the top. If one produces results but doesn’t fill out the other criteria, make them a contractor. Instead of just getting rid, if they provide great work, suggest they step aside as a freelancer, and pay them well for their services. If one has loyalty and spirit but produces average results, they may be better suited to work in customer service, support, accounting, or fulfillment. Work of this nature tends to be systemized, and you’ll need people with average skills to manage the perfect systems you’ve created.
DELEGATE LATER?
If you don’t want to spend money, and you notice you’re good at some money-generating activities, you can keep working on them as long as your business is regularly growing.
Money-generating activities are either marketing or sales. With you spending your time personally on marketing or sales, your business can grow up to seven figures. That’s not ideal, but that’s possible if you EXCEL at marketing or sales.
Just remember this is just a deferral!
Even if you’re great at marketing or sales, you’ll have to let these activities go sooner or later, if you want to grow your business up to eight figures.
What makes you succeed in the first place will be the very thing that will hold you back from future growth, if you keep doing what you’ve always done. You’ve got to develop other skills, among which is DELEGATION, to reach and surpass the next threshold. There’s no way around this. It’s the #1 reason most entrepreneurs get stuck: they attempt to do every task themselves.
Don’t complain that you have 1,000 things on your to-do list. Your goal is to empty your to-do list not by striking off the work, but by shifting tasks to OTHER PEOPLE’s to-do lists! Scheduling your time often means saying NO to most of the tasks that land on your desk. To obtain something, you have to give up something else. It’s the law of nature 101. The only way to get closer to something is to sacrifice what separates you from it.
You get it? Your sacrifice is your investment.
If you want your business to grow, you’ll have to sacrifice total control. I’m not talking about handing over the control of your business to somebody else, I’m talking about relinquishing you of your operational duties, starting with the BRONZE activities, and then also the SILVER activities. Your role as a business owner is to find somebody to help you on your activities; first on the low-value tasks, then also on the high-value tasks so that you can focus on the super-high-value tasks.
If you excel at implementing a revenue-generating activity (something related to marketing or sales), you can continue to work on it until around seven figures in revenue and delegate it later after having trained people. You’ll have to delegate it anyway if you want to grow: that’s a given.
If you’re not the best person you know at implementing your revenue-generating activities, delegate them at around the 6-figure in revenue mark, following the process above.
This is the very stage where most business owners get stuck, and that’s why I keep saying that building an 8-figure business is not for everybody. Some business owners seem like they’re determined, but they get lost along the way, essentially at this critical stage. As already mentioned, it’s the most important phase in the LIFETIME of a business. This is the END BOSS.
Implement this way of working in your business, and let me know how it goes by joining the discussion in our Facebook group:
facebook.com/groups/8figureworld
But don’t worry; if you follow these instructions and if there’s a real leader within you, that is, if you’re the type of person who really aspires to grow an 8-figure company, you’ll overcome this stage. It’s painful at first, but the rewards are immense, and they’re waiting for you.
Despite all these instructions, for some reason business owners usually need personal help the most at this level. If the need arises, schedule a call to chat. Let’s get those results together! I’m here to show you the straight line between where you are and where you want to be. I’m also here to tell you what you NEED to hear to move forward fast, not what you WANT to hear:
8FigureWorld.com/call
Classic case study: I once had a discussion with a business owner in my neighborhood who was struggling to organize his priorities. The trouble was that, at a very early stage, as soon as he tried doing Google ads, he was quite good at it. He had some results right away by doing it all by himself. It helped him to grow his business much faster than expected … which was great. But after a while, he was stuck at the low 6-figure level because he didn’t want to let anybody do his ads. To this day, he’s still doing it by himself.
You see so many people stuck at the low 6-figure level, essentially around the $150k ceiling, because they want to keep 100% control of their operations.
Don’t miss this golden rule: growth and control hate each other.
Unfortunately, business owners are often control freaks. Many will spend the remainder of their lives at this stage, ignoring customers who ask for more. What a shame.
Think about it: if you make it to six figures, and you get some profit, that means there’s a MARKET! Your business model works. People WANT to buy your stuff. This is just the beginning! Your business is warming up.
Now it’s time to FEED the fire. If you want your business to grow, you have to accept that you are NOT your business anymore. You have to let other people in. That’s the only way!
I suggest you first hire an assistant who’ll help you on a regular basis, especially if they can also handle the phone calls. Hiring a personal assistant is usually the first step to freeing up your schedule. Hire the single best person you can find, whatever the price is. Better to have the best assistant work for you for ten hours per week, than an average one for forty hours per week. Trust me on this.
You want somebody who learns fast and understands the purpose of your business, someone who will become an extension of you. In the beginning, you both work together, so your personal assistant can understand your expectations. Later, once they’re trained and you have lots of people to deal with, you’ll be delighted your assistant is able to replace you and handle the emails and inbound phone calls from marketing, technical, design, sales, and so on. As for you, keep a written record of their performance versus their commitments so that you can measure their results.