The Cost of Not Delegating

I grew a business to 7 figures with a team that fits on two hands, but the vast majority of the admin tasks stayed in my camp for most of that time and I’m here to tell you unequivocally: not delegating costs vastly more than the cost of paying someone to just…do the things.

I’m in a creative flow right now, building product after product, ideas stacked so high I can hardly write them down because they’re coming so fast.

Grudgingly, I stopped to make coffee and jump in the shower (child called in sick this morning which threw the entire morning routine to the wind), eager to get back to a new feature I’m building out.

The shower was an hour ago.

I haven’t even looked at the project.

Instead, I answered a CS rep’s question about a defective product from a vendor I fired for exactly this.

Then, my warehouse team member told me we’re out of stock on a product.

Scratching my head, I looked back at the detailed message I’d sent to one of my reps asking her to take on inventory ordering because we needed to get it ordered.

“Got it!”

Crickets.

So I ran the inventory report, filled out the purchase order, emailed the vendor and updated the team, all the while thinking about how much creative bandwidth this kind of stuff steals, easily 2x the energy I’d have burned building instead of FIXING.

It only took me 10 minutes, but it pulled me out of the flow, stuck me back in analytical brain and that’s a cliff I’ll need to climb back up to achieve creativity again today.

When we consider the benefit of delegating as gaining the time we spend doing the actual task, we forget that entrepreneur brains need full, unfettered space to do what they do best: create.

How many thousands of cuts do you endure each day, week, whatever, stuck churning in the trenches instead of launching your business to the heights?

Hire the person. (The right one, and then manage them well.) Free your mind. Watch your business bloom.