Do you find yourself trying to get everything done on your own, even when your plate is overflowing and you have people that are capable of helping you?
It’s a challenge every fitness business owner faces at some point in their journey. In order to grow or tackle new challenges and opportunities, you have to delegate. And to succeed in business, you’re going to have to learn how to do it well.
Who better to ask than certified Fitness Business Coaches?
We asked our Success Coaches to share a few of their strategies and tactics for how to effectively delegate and what positive effects that will have on both YOU as the business owner and your team.
Justin: The first perspective shift that needs to happen before you can begin delegating is the faster you realize that you should not be doing everything, the faster your business will grow. It is a pretty quick way to bottleneck your business growth relying solely on your skill set for everything.
With that being said if you are new to delegating the first focus is just about freeing up your bandwidth to allow you to pick your head up out of the weeds and direct the ship.
So, list out the different hats you wear right now and the tasks that go with those. Like marketing, sales, operations, coaching, cleaning, list everything out and what you do for each. Then it is about looking at what is the lowest on the totem pole to move off of you. Typically for most it involves bringing on some kind of admin support to take things off your plate like customer service, emails, social posts, payment processing, etc. That alone can free up around 5-10 hours a week depending on the volume.
This also allows you to grow as a leader that guides others without the stress of trying to delegate a high performance position like marketing/sales right away.
Delegating and building a team is essential to growing a business. There is no way around that. It just comes down to approaching it in a methodical approach that starts small and builds up. This allows your business to keep growing in proportion and for you to grow as a leader.
Asa: Step one is to organize and prioritize your task list. Categorize tasks and duties into high, medium and low priority tasks. This way you can easily delineate what you need to offload first and foremost. High priority tasks are those that will take some time and training to delegate (such as sales) low priority tasks are those types of things as owner you could easily give up (changing the toilet paper:).
Once you have these organized, offload the low priority tasks right away (as these tasks should take little to no training) so you can immediately focus on creating training pieces for the higher priority tasks. An efficient way to create training content for these other tasks is next time you are executing these yourself create a video tutorial as you navigate through it. This way you can begin to create a virtual training library for employees to train with and reference if they have follow up questions. This also provides you the training pieces for any new hires in the future.
By taking a few simple starter steps towards delegation, this will give you the time and energy to focus on new revenue generating tasks in order to move the needle for the business versus using your time and energy on the tasks that are easily delegated.
Luke: Thinking you’re the only one who can do things in your business is a surefire way to sabotage growth and success. You NEED to be willing to pass things off. Building a team of leaders around you will bring forward new opportunities that simply cannot emerge when you’re buried under doingness.
Once you’re willing, take a deep breath and surrender to the process. There’s a big difference between assigning someone a task and enrolling them in owning a responsibility. If they’re truly enrolled, they’ll approach this as a valuable opportunity to learn, grow, make a difference, and contribute. Otherwise, they will see it as just another “thing” to do, and their results will reflect that. So if you’re really committed to handing over a responsibility, take the time to get your team member grounded in why, not just what.
Then, of course, be sure you clarify expectations, desired outcomes, and deadlines. How much time do you want them spending on this? What communication do you need/want from them throughout? If they have questions or encounter challenges, what’s the process? Each person learns differently, so get input from them to make sure there’s a workable plan for them to acquire the necessary skills for this task. Maybe they learn best through verbal instruction, or by watching you do it, or by doing it themselves. Then once they have the basics, set them loose!
As much as possible, make yourself available for support so you’re nurturing their development. Set times to debrief and share feedback. Probably the most important thing is to make it safe for them to fail. Uncover what there is to learn and build on that. And be open to input from them. Let them know to speak freely if they discover a better way to do things, or if they have specific requests of you.
Of course, if someone repeatedly underperforms, investigate why. Usually it’s one of three reasons: they don’t know what you want, they don’t have the skills to do it, or they just don’t want to do it. If it’s none of those three, look in the mirror because the problem just might be you.
Pamela: The reality is you can only get so far by doing it all yourself. The second reality is in order for your delegation to be effective and efficient you have to take time and do it the right way.
Look at the list of things you are doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. Of those tasks, what are you really good at doing, what are you not good at doing, what tasks should be done by someone else, what tasks take up too much of your time? There are a variety of questions you could ask yourself to determine where you can start to hand off tasks or projects. As you do this make sure it aligns well with your organizational chart with various roles and responsibilities of each position.
While delegating training is just as important as any role, don’t make assumptions that the person knows how to do what you are asking. They will still need to be taught or led.
Delegating does not necessarily always mean needing to hire staff. There are some instances like bookkeeping, accounting, and paid advertising, as examples where you might decide to hire out to someone who is not an employee.
Delegating tasks doesn’t take all the pressure off of you since you are still managing/leading but it does free up space for you to get the tasks completed that you need to be focusing on.
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Similar Coaches’ Corner topics:
- How Can I Overcome Analysis Paralysis as a Fitness Business Owner?
- How do Gym Owners Recognize, Deal With, and Prevent Fatigue and Burnout?
- What Happens When Gym Owners Let Emotions Guide Decisions?
- The Habits of High Performing Business Owners
Have something specific you’d like to hear from our Fitness Business Coaches about?
You can submit your Needs Assessment here, and we’ll send you an individualized report, or you can talk directly to a coach by scheduling a Strategy Session.
Want to see how our certified Fitness Business Coaches handle more common questions and roadblocks? Check out our Ask a certified Fitness Business Coach Guide.
