Mark C. Winters argues leaders waste time on tasks an assistant could handle. If you run a company with more than 10 employees or $2M revenue, you should hire one. Start by delegating one task this week, then add more each quarter to recapture hours for real work.
Hey everybody, it's Mark Z. Winters and I have an important question to ask you. What have you delegated to make more time in your day? Today doesn't matter if you're a visionary, an integrator, or someone else. We're all trying to maximize how much we get done in a day. We all have things we want to accomplish. The definition of work is different for everybody, especially as it relates to what Dan Sullivan calls their unique abilities. An unfortunate side effect of today's society is that we equate busy with productive. Productive work gets the most meaningful stuff done. Busy work simply distracts you from that meaningful stuff. I think we can all agree that we can't do it all. And being productive isn't about doing more or working longer. Being productive is about actually producing more meaningful work. It's about getting that work moved forward and completed. It's about freeing up capacity to to do meaningful work by delegating tasks to the appropriate level. And that means getting an assistant. I have an old friend that felt so strongly about this topic that people almost couldn't have a conversation with him before. At some point he drops in the phrase get an assistant. Now if you don't have an assistant, he's going to try to convince you to get one. So why does he do that? Because he knows it works. You see, getting an assistant changed my friend's life. And from my own personal experience, learning how to really leverage a great assistant made a dramatic impact on my life too. So I'll go so far as to say, if you're a visionary or an integrator leading a business with more than 10 employees and with revenue over $2 million, you need an assistant. Frankly, you don't have any business spending your time on anything but your highest level work. You need to learn how to delegate the other stuff. Seriously, look at it like this. If you're in this position, leading a company and you don't have an assistant, you're basically committing malpractice. Don't do that. You need an assistant. And you need to learn how to correctly leverage this resource so that you can focus on more high level work. Not sold yet. Well, let me ask you this. What would you do with an extra hour of time? What's it worth to you, to your company, to your family? Would you get to the gym and take care of your body? Would you spend it on that big project that keeps getting pushed off to the side? Would you go see one of your kids games? How much is that hour worth compared to how much it May actually cost to recapture it. I bet you'd be blown away if I said you could spend 15 or $25 and go see your kid's game or lay the foundation to land that big project when you otherwise wouldn't be able to. That's an easy trade off, right? There are companies out there specifically designed to help you find somebody to do something for you. Let them help you get an assistant. In fact, here's my challenge to you. Delegate one thing this week to an assistant that could be a virtual assistant or an internal resource that you haven't been using. Once you find that assistant, pick just one task, just one thing. Hand it off to them. That's it. Let them take care of it for you. You have a little voice in your head telling you why that's a bad idea. You'll think it'll take you longer to show them how to do a task than if you just did it yourself, that you'll have to clean up whatever messes they make and it'd be quicker just to do it yourself. Maybe even that it's a waste of money. So I have another challenge for you. Ignore that voice. Fight through all that noise and just delegate something to an assistant this week. See what happens. If it doesn't work out perfectly, that's okay. Learn from it and then try again. Delegating tasks might not seem like a skill, but it is. And like any skill, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get doing it. So keep going. Develop your capability to hand some things off to an assistant. Just let them help you. Once you get comfortable, set a goal for yourself to keep growing this capability for for example, every 90 days each quarter, I push myself to find an extra four hours a week. To do that, I have to hand something off, something else off to an assistant. Think about it. Every quarter, I'm recapturing half a day each week to get meaningful work done. Getting an assistant will give you so much of your time back that you'll wonder how you managed before. It will make all the difference. So to recap one, get it into your head that your time is valuable and you need to spend it on the most important things. Number two, experiment by delegating just one thing this week and learn from the experience. And number three, set a goal to grow your capability of delegating tasks. You can learn more tips and tricks by going to rocketfueluniversity.com there you can join the free online community of visionaries and integrators and interact with leaders like you who maximize their time and their visionary integrator relationships. Thanks for watching today and until next time, go rock it.
