All right guys, Episode 493, and we are wrapping up the Marketing 101 series.
We’re talking about delegating tasks.
I think this is one of those basics that we skip over because I don’t know why I definitely did. I’m going to talk about it in terms of marketing today. Because in full honesty with you delegating and having a team is something I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. But it is a skill I am building. It is a skill that is growing. For reals, it is a developing skill. I highly recommend following along and learning from an incredible business coach who does amazing things around leadership and team. If you need an example, Tara Newman over at the Bold Leadership Revolution is a fantastic choice. She’s who I work with and I’ve been in her mastermind for a couple of years and it’s great. I really enjoy what I’ve learned from her in that space, as far as my team.
And remember that it is a work in progress. But some of what we’re going to talk about today in terms of delegating your marketing tasks is helpful.
So let’s talk about what you should delegate and maybe some things you shouldn’t delegate with one very simple question. If you go all the way back, I know, stay with me, to the beginning of this month, and you go through that list of whys. When it comes to why you’re doing different marketing tasks or things at all in your life and business, and you’re delegating the completion at any of those tasks, stop, end of episode. Kidding, not the end of the episode. But for real, if you are at a point now where you’re like, “Yeah, there are things that are on my list of things that I don’t know why we do them.” Or, “I don’t see a result from them.” Going to our second episode, and who are you working with, and how are you selling them?
If you’re delegating any of those things, stop, just stop, those are things you shouldn’t be delegating.
And I’m actually really, really excited because I have an episode next week with Allison Crow. We’re going to be talking about some of the things she has delegated and then taken back and how she made that decision. I’m really excited for you to learn that from her because it’s an important thing to acknowledge as you’re delegating is, why am I delegating? If you can’t justify why then stop doing it. There are absolutely things I have delegated and then taken back, more often than not it is, why am I doing this? Because I’m not even the person on the team best at this thing. So why am I the one doing it, I’m literally doing what I tell my team not to do. So again, work in progress, guys. This is about progress, not perfection, all right?
Anyway, so let’s talk about some of the things we should be delegating.
I’m going to talk about this… I’ll be honest, this episode is titled with should and shouldn’t because that’s what made you click on it. I know I do it too. But what I want this to be more about is I’m going to talk about the things I didn’t use to delegate and I delegate now.
A great episode of start with, by the way, is… There’s an episode and I’ll link to it in the show notes that’s called, Who Should You Hire to Produce Your Podcast? It’s Episode 488. And we talk about my experience DIYing some of this show and why I chose to do that. I think it’s a really good example for you of my thought process and some of the thought processes you can go through to decide if you want to hire something out. In this episode, of course, we’re talking about podcasting specifically, but you can apply the same sort of principles to anything in your business, any part of your marketing. And so I want you to A, go and listen to that episode but B, start thinking about, are there things that come after your creation?
We talk about, in the last two episodes now, how are you selling things?
We talked about last week, how things most often are referrals and this podcast. I wanted to really make sure this is where I prioritized my task delegation. Because I knew delegating parts of this thing that I already know works will have a return. Which leaves me some space to go experiment with other things. This is very, very true. It also gave me the space to learn just enough about something else to then hire someone else to support this. What I’m talking about now is SEO. I actually had someone come in and do a lot of the SEO work that we’ve done this quarter. But I also paid to have them train my team so that we can double down the amount of traffic we’re getting to the thing that works.
And so I want you to look at when you’re looking at delegating, priority one, the thing I already know works, how can I take some of that off my plate?
Again, back to my example, because it’s the easiest one to keep us consistent to the show, the podcast works. And so I don’t edit the podcast anymore, even though I could. Because my time is better invested in doing something else that supports the generation of our elites. Editing this podcast is incredibly important because this podcast works. But that doesn’t mean it has to be me, even though it’s a skill I have. And the reason I’m pointing that out is because so often my resistance, (I think I talk about this a little bit in Episode 488), my resistance to delegating tasks is, “Well, I could do it and I’m free.”
However, I’m not free. My job, and this is something I completely lifted from Tara Newman over at the Bold Leadership Revolution, by the way, is head of sales. Sales is my most important job because it is what allows this podcast to work. And we know this podcast works. Awe know this podcast gets us leads, and so I have to be available to respond to those leads. I can’t be so stuck in producing the thing that generates leads that I’m not there to nurture and receive those leads, right?
Even if it’s something that you could do, delegate the task.
Again, you’ll know there’ll be an ROI because you’ve already been DIYing, you’ve already been doing it. So you know there’s going to be a return. Then start to look at, where can I further support this thing that already works? Because that’s probably also going to have a pretty good ROI.
Now, this is more of a gamble. Less of a sure thing because it’s a support piece, but I’m making an educated assumption. Again, educated because I was able to take some of that new time I had from letting go of some of those things that I knew were working already. For example, with this podcast, all I do is record it. This right now, my time sitting here talking to you, this would be the extent of my involvement in the show up until I get to hear from you. So when you hit reply on the emails or you DM me on Instagram. You comment on a Facebook post or you send me a message on LinkedIn, that’s when I get involved again. That’s the two parts I like. I know that sounds really childish, but it’s true.
These are the parts I like, where I get to talk to you and then you talk back, I just have to wait for your side, right? And so I’ve been made more available to A, listen to those messages and B, learn about how else we could drive traffic to the thing I know works without being a part of it.
Now, again, I’m looking at SEO. Because I also already had a hold of the social media part, obviously, because of what we do, right?
But still, that was something that I could have held onto. That was something that I could have kept, but instead, I delegated the task because I knew it worked. I had built a strategy, I knew the team could continue to implement it. At this point, my team evolves the strategy. I’m still involved in that process. I still direct and lead that process, but they lead it alongside me. And from there again, I was free to go learn a little more about what else we could do, and I chose SEO, for you it may be learning a little more about social.
Now, here’s where I want to talk about investing that learning time. I think our instinct sometimes is, I have to buy a course. Or I have to hire someone to do it. And I don’t think those are the only two options when you go into learning about something or taking action on something. So yeah, I could go and just hire somebody to do SEO and not know anything about it. Or I could go take an SEO course like I’m going to do myself. But I don’t actually need to go that deep. Instead, what I’m going to do is some basic Google research. Literally just reading some articles from some people who know more than me so that I can get enough understanding that I can have a conversation with somebody.
And then from there, I’m going to book a consultation with somebody.
I’ve talked to SEO people in the past and learned more about what I needed to know to have somebody on my team. What things I need to have, what ducks I need to have in a row. And again, a little bit more so I can have an intelligent conversation with hiring somebody. So those things like those one-hour standalone calls with me, it’s a great thing to book if you’re in that, I want to know more, I don’t want to have this done for me, but there are questions I want answered.
I’ve done this over the years with a couple of SEO people. Then I hired somebody for one project. I didn’t commit to the next 10 years of SEO support from this person. By the way, anybody who requires a 10-year commitment, maybe settle down. But I didn’t commit to monthly services or a large retainer. We started with one project and then we started with another project. And then I hired her to train my team. Because honestly, it allows us to provide more value for our podcast production clients. But also it allows me to, again, continue to get this person’s support and guess what? She’s doing that training alongside on another project. She will stay on as a monthly consultant to oversee the work the team is doing to help me review and make changes.
Again, I delegated this task after I took some time to learn about it and see if it would be the next step I wanted to take. Then I could take a calculated risk. That’s how I’m deciding and prioritizing how I delegate.
I want you to start looking at those things that we’ve talked about in the last three episodes and figure out where you’re going to delegate these tasks.
Where you’re going to delete, where you’re going to double down, delegate, delete double down. And double down, part of that double down might be delegation. Part of that double-down might be you learning more, stepping into that cycle of, I want to learn more and ask questions, whatever it is, but I want you to look at what that is.
I think, I know, that a lot of times we hire out of order. We hire somebody to assist us, read emails, organize files, post social media messages before we invest in getting strategic support. So maybe that’s a business coach. Maybe that’s a sales coach or a high-level marketing strategy support. Maybe that’s somebody to build a strategy for your podcast launch before you say, “Okay, assistant, is it possible for you to upload this raw file to Libsyn?” Whatever the thing is, I think sometimes we jump into an assistant before we really know and/or have any proof that that assistant helping us will get us anywhere.
Whereas if you work with a business coach and you really refine what your offerings are.
You really look at how to leverage what you’re doing. You really build solid foundations. If you work with a sales coach so you know you can close the leads you’re going to generate. If you work with a marketing person to build out an actual strategy so that whoever you hire in to do the management, posting, and scheduling really has clear directions. Then you’re on a much faster path to seeing a return on those investments.
What I want you to look at, especially if you’re early in delegating, maybe you haven’t hired anybody, maybe you’ve hired people in the past and you’ve been really disappointed, I want you to look at the order in which you hired. Did you hire someone to help execute tasks before you hired someone to really solidify what tasks need to be done?
One of the most valuable things I do with clients in our single sessions is to answer questions around what actually matters in their marketing.
This is a great way to use the strategy and support package, the 90-minute call, and the 30 days of Voxer access, is great. Let’s sit down in that session, let’s dig into all your numbers and look at what’s actually getting results so we know where we can delegate right then. And then build up job descriptions and hire them, right? And then over that 30 days, we can monitor, what tasks am I doing that I need to delegate? What am I doing that I could have somebody come in and help? And on the flip side, where can I delete? And I think it’s so common for us to look at this with the admin side and not look at it with the marketing side.
If you’ve got somebody on your team right now that is posting on social media, do you know why they’re posting? Do they have a clear understanding of what you’re selling when? Or are you telling them last minute, “Oh, hey, I meant to tell you I think I should sell this.” Well, when you build a strategy you won’t have that.
Or you will have that ability to do that because they have a strong foundation of, if when I say A, B happens.
When I go, “Ooh, I want to sell this.” We go to the pool and say, “Great, this is how we sell that. These are the buttons we need to push, buttons pushed.”
Again, I want you to go back to these last few episodes we’ve talked about, figure out what you’re going to delegate and what you’re going to delete. Figure out what you want to double down on, what you want to learn more about. And then I want you to book in some time with somebody who can help you build out why you want to delegate those tasks.
So maybe it is a strategist for marketing. Maybe it’s a business coach, maybe it is somebody again, with an operations expertise or systems expertise. Maybe it’s an online business manager. And maybe you find out that a person you book for that can be the person that helps you longterm. Or maybe you then go on and hire out somebody else longterm. Either of those options are possible, but you now know really clearly what you’re delegating and why you’re delegating it.
Because if you have anything that you’re delegating right now, and you don’t know why. You don’t know what purpose it serves in your marketing. Early in your business as a whole, this is not good.
That’s not what we want, right? Then you are spinning your wheels without investment. And in all reality, you’re kind of doing a big disservice to the person you’re paying. They can’t get you results and they want to get you results. But we have to equip them to do that. I hope that makes sense. So that’s really what it comes down to when we look at what tasks we should and we shouldn’t delegate. What’s working and what’s not working. What’s already working, that’s what we delegate. If it’s not working, no, we don’t delegate that task. We figure out how to make it work or we delete it. Both options are good, and in a lot of cases delete is the option we need to take.
I put my soapbox away, this episode was borderline ranty but hopefully in a really charming and interesting way. I want you to take action. If you got an email about this episode, email me back. If you listened to it on social or… just everything but carrier pigeons, you know the rules. Reach out. Let me know one thing you’re deleting, one thing you’re delegating and one thing you’re going to double down on. What do you want to learn more? For me, it’s still SEO. We’re still digging in more and more and more on SEO because that’s what we decided to do in Q3.
All right, if you have anything that’s feeling unclear or off, or you want to know if the strategy and support option is the fit for you, head on over to uncommonlymore.com.
Get all the details and links to everything that I mentioned in this episode, and I will see you next week. Oh, Ooh, we have a guest next week. I’ve got Allison Crow with me, she’s actually a client of the Uncommonly More agency. We talk about building our strategy. We talk about delegation. She’s been in business a very long time, she’s an incredible life and business coach. She’s got a very cool membership community. I’m really excited for you to hear that conversation, that’s next week. I will see you then, okay? Have a great day.
