One of the tougher tasks for most of us is delegation. Whether the difficulty is due to a tendency toward perfectionism or a lack of trust in the ability of others to do the job as well as we will, most of us resist handing over even mundane tasks associated with our business, therefore assuring that we will not grow.
A more dangerous reason that some of us keep ourselves occupied with busywork is to escape the very thing we need most: time to think.
If your goals are, as management gurus like to say, BHAG, or big, hairy and audacious goals, then learning the art of delegation is critical. One cannot run a large organization alone. Truthfully, even the solitary geek affiliate marketer finds that he must outsource certain tasks if he is to remain competitive
If in network marketing with a growing down-line, you are probably mentoring those who have big goals like you and if you have an affiliate business without messy down-lines, you must still get the word out via SEO, blogs, social media and the innumerable tasks involved in 21st century marketing.
None of us can become expert in all of the required fields of internet marketing; therefore the answer is, of course, to contract out the jobs in which you have little or no expertise. The good news for the small business entrepreneur is that there are many places where one can find skilled people to hire for one task or as a virtual employee.
Sites like Elance, Guru.com can provide freelance web designers, experts in SEO, blogging, copy writing or almost and task you can conceive of. And recently, Fiverr.com has come on board offering article spinning, web design, video production and an amazing variety of skilled people from all over the world; all for $5.00 per job.
Due to the emergence of technologies like Skype, VOIP, virtual assistants, (VA’s) are becoming increasingly commonplace. Young and surprisingly skilled workers from the Philippines, India and China can make themselves invaluable in a very short period of time if you are willing to train and then delegate.
After handing over the mundane tasks, our fear may be that we have too much time on our hands, too much time to think.
Psychologists have suggested that success may cause more stress that failure; the comfort of busywork prohibits those most critical of efforts for the entrepreneur: creative thinking, planning and strategizing.