By Elizabeth Eiss
You built your business from the ground up—every decision, every detail. But what got you here won’t get you to the next level. In this piece, Elizabeth Eiss explores how effective delegation and a mindset shift can help you do less, lead more, and scale smarter.
Suppose you’re a small business owner or solopreneur. In that case, chances are you are all too familiar with the feeling of being CEO plus your own marketing team, sales force, customer service rep, bookkeeper, and operations manager – all in one. It’s the nature of starting and growing a business from scratch, and it’s normal. But the “jack of all trades” approach isn’t scalable if you want to build a successful business. In fact, it’s one of the biggest obstacles to long-term growth.
In our previous article, Scaling You: Leverage the Value of YOUR Time to Scale Your Business Impact, we explored how small businesses can use strategic time management and delegation with the Process-Tools-People (PTP) method to scale more impactfully. In this article, we’ll dive even deeper into effective delegation, discussing the importance of an “invest vs. spend” mindset and the role of core vs. non-core work distinction so you can “do less” while achieving more.
Value of Your Time: A Mindset for Scaling
Time is the one resource you can’t buy more of, so shifting your mindset from “spending” to “investing” time is the difference between building a business or simply keeping busy.
There is a subtle but powerful difference between spending time and investing time. When you invest time, you’re putting energy into activities with a multiplier effect – actions that lead to more client value and thus more growth, revenue, or leverage in the future. Spending time, by contrast, often results in maintenance, not momentum.
When solo business owners and lean teams start treating time as a finite resource, they become more intentional.
Entrepreneurs must think of their time as an investment to truly understand the value of time. Ask yourself: What is my time worth per hour? More importantly, what kinds of tasks are truly worthy of that rate? If you’re spending hours on administrative work or repetitive tasks that could be outsourced for a fraction of your hourly value, you’re not making the best use of your time. Our complementary ROI of Time Calculator can help define and determine the value of your time (in dollars).
When solo business owners and lean teams start treating time as a finite resource, they become more intentional. That intentionality is the foundation of smart delegation and scalable growth.
The Art and Science of Delegating Effectively
Delegating is a skill, and like any skill, it improves with intention and practice. Simply offloading tasks isn’t enough—you need the right people, clear communication, and accountability structures in place.
At ResultsResourcing, we believe one of the secrets to scaling is creating systems that allow you to focus on high-value work. If you’re constantly bogged down with tasks, you’re limiting your ability to grow.
For small business owners and solopreneurs, scaling doesn’t mean managing a big team – it means working smarter by:
- Protecting your schedule for strategic thinking and revenue-generating work
- Building repeatable systems and processes
- Delegating effectively so you can lead instead of manage
This mindset shift helps you operate more like a CEO and less like an operator.
Do or Delegate: Get Clear on Tasks to Create Time
To determine what to delegate, you must first identify the “core” work of your business. Core work is anything that:
- Directly contributes to your unique value proposition
- Drives revenue or client satisfaction
- Requires your expertise, vision, or leadership
Non-core work, on the other hand, includes tasks that are necessary for operations but don’t require your unique skills. These can include bookkeeping, scheduling, customer support, social media management, and more.
Here is a practical framework for identifying and categorizing tasks:
- List all the tasks you do over a week.
- Label each task as core or non-core.
- Evaluate whether you are the best person to do each task.
By assessing the urgency and importance of each task, you can determine whether you need to handle it yourself or delegate it to someone else.
For solopreneurs especially, it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing everything yourself. But chances are, you’ll find many non-core activities that consume a disproportionate amount of your time. That’s your opportunity to delegate.
The Process, Tools, People (PTP) Method can help you delegate even more intentionally by layering in processes and tools before you outsource to people.
Build to Scale by Doing More (of the Right Things)
If the thought of letting go makes you anxious, you’re not alone. Many small business owners and solopreneurs struggle to find the right talent or fear that no one can do the work as well as they can.
Many small business owners and solopreneurs struggle to find the right talent or fear that no one can do the work as well as they can.
But growth requires change. To scale, you must invest your time where it creates the most value. That means doing what only you can do—and delegating the rest. So, ask yourself: What can I stop doing so I can start scaling?
Remember: Core work is where your leadership, innovation, and vision live. Everything else is a candidate for delegation.
The smartest small business owners know their highest-value activities and guard their time fiercely. They don’t try to do it all. Instead, they build flexible teams who complement their strengths and allow them to stay focused on what matters most.
If you’re not sure how or where to start, ResultsResourcing can help you get clear on your needs and optimize resources to reach your goals and objectives.
For further insights on strategic hiring and scaling your impact, visit ResultsResourcing.
Elizabeth Eiss
