June 22, 2015 |

Too Many Hats: Delegate and Elevate Your Way to A More Sane Business World

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My wife says I own entirely too many hats. And she is right. I have a problem. Unfortunately, this problem spills over into my business life as well, where as an agency owner and entrepreneur, I tend to take on way more responsibilities in way too many areas of our business than is healthy. For me AND my business.


Lately, I have been working to remove some of these hats. To pass on those responsibilities that others can do better than I, so that I can focus more on those aspects of my business at which I am best, and for which I have a stronger attraction.


Let’s use the plumbing example to illustrate my case. Sure, I can fix that leaky faucet or crawl under my house and re-plumb my kitchen sink. Am I going to enjoy myself? Probably not. Will I eventually get the job done after 3 trips to the hardware store and scaring the neighbors with round after round of entirely inappropriate language emanating from my crawl space? Absolutely. Or I could just bring in the experts, have them knock it out in a third of the time, and go on enjoying my weekend? This, my friends, is the answer.


One of our good friends at WILDSTORY Media put it this way. “When I spend $100 to have my lawn mowed by an expert, I love it. I come home from a bike ride or a hike with a yard in tip-top shape and think, ‘That is $100 well spent.'” He has recognized the value of letting others do the work they are best at while enabling him time to focus on those items which are most important to his life. Knowing Marc, these aren’t always recreational in nature. He wrote a great blog post that touches on this very subject. Learning to escalate and delegate makes this happen.


So right now, I am doing this very thing. Identifying the hats. Assessing which ones I am best at or required to wear. And finding others to wear those hats for which I am less capable of wearing or which do not represent core business-building activities.


Now, if I could just do the same in my closet.


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