Grow your trades business by delegating!

If you’re a self-employed tradie or you own a trades business, you might feel that you’re too busy to even think about how you can grow the business. It’s easy to get bogged down in all the day to day tasks, from the work in your specialist trade itself, dealing with customers and preparing quotes to invoicing, admin and accounting. But what if you didn’t have to do every last task yourself? Delegating some tasks can free up your time and energy to take a step back and think about your longer-term strategies and goals for the business, and how you can achieve them. 

Many people who are skilled and knowledgeable in their trade want to do every part of a job themselves to make sure it’s done right. When you run a trades business, this need for control can also seep over into other aspects of the business and you might think you have to do everything yourself in order to be sure it’s done the way you want it, but do you really know finance better than a specialist like an accountant for tradies? That controlling attitude is understandable when your trade is your livelihood, but it only gets you from one day to the next and all the time you’re spending on tasks that other people could be doing is time you aren’t spending on really developing and growing your business.  

Step back to move forward 

Moving your business forward might mean you have to take a step back from trying to control and oversee every last task. 

When you first go out on your own instead of being employed by someone else, you’re focussed on turning your skills and knowledge into a viable, functioning business. This usually means you wear all the different hats because you need to get your head around how the business works and, for another thing, few of us can afford to hire anyone else when we’re starting out. But this is your business and you should be in charge of guiding it and driving it forward rather than doing every individual task yourself. In fact, feeling like you need to micromanage every last little task is often what stops you from really controlling and guiding the business in a more meaningful way. 

When you realise this and start delegating, you can achieve growth for your business in ways you hadn’t even considered when you’re narrowly focussed on the everyday tasks. Changing your mindset in this way can not only help your business but also improve your personal wellbeing and satisfaction as a business owner. 

Business is like parenting 

Some people compare managing a business to parenting. It’s important to recognise when your child is growing up and when to give them a little more freedom to look after themselves. The same is true of your business. It’s your ‘baby’ and you want to look after it, but just like a kid with an over-controlling parent, the business won’t be able to grow if you don’t let it stand on its own. Realising that you can trust others to do some of the work involved in running your business can be a real game-changer and, instead of wearing yourself out by taking on every task, you can become a more effective leader. Being a good business leader often means delegating solutions for other people to carry out. This means you can focus on the big picture stuff: setting goals and planning for the future to build the best business possible. 

Delegating work to others, whether it’s in the trade itself or in other roles like an administrator or an accountant for tradies, can be a challenge for anyone who is used to being really hands-on in their work. But delegating effectively makes the difference between burning yourself out being overly controlling of the details and putting yourself in charge of steering your business towards greater success.