Developing and marketing your business means a lot to you, and it should. However, you have found that you cannot do it alone. No matter how hard you have tried—caffeine-fueled sleepless nights of fervently working yourself into oblivion and all—you have finally acquiesced. You need help. 

Let’s be honest: no matter how much of a business wiz you are, outsourcing tasks to a team of people who specialize in their unique fields can help you win the day before you lose your marbles … well, the rest of your marbles. Some are probably already gone as a result of starting your own business, but we digress. 

If the first step is admitting you need help, what do the subsequent steps look like when it comes to mastering the art of delegation? 

Choosing Right-Minded People

There is a concept in the Zen Buddhist tradition called right-mindedness.  Often referred to as “right view” or “right understanding,” it’s one of the components of the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the path to enlightenment. 

Right-mindedness involves understanding the nature of reality and seeing things as they truly are, free from delusion or misunderstanding. While the Buddha would likely turn over and reincarnate again for us using the term in a business setting, just hang in there; he’ll be alright. 

When finding the right marketing professionals to outsource to, be it a talented team or a small handful of exceptional individuals, you want to find the right-minded folks to help you achieve your goals. (This doesn’t mean they have to be enlightened, although wouldn’t it be nice if they were?) 

You need to find those who take the time to clearly understand you and your business, your unique mission, your brand, and its voice. They should see you and your business as they really are. They should understand your goals and  offer ideas about how to help you reach them. Ideally, these are the people who will be able to work as extensions of you, exponentially increasing your impact and doing a better job than even you could. 

So, how do you find right-minded people? 

Any marketing agency competing for your valuable business should offer you a complimentary consultation and business analysis. This analysis will review your business’s strengths, weaknesses, and market competition and offer a view of how they see your future unfolding.

Take the time to be thorough, and don’t be afraid to ask questions during these meetings. You are potentially forming a relationship with people to whom you will entrust your business’s identity—it’s important that they not only feel like a good fit for you as people but that you feel confident in their capability to meet your business’s needs. 

If you aren’t certain an agency is a great fit for you after a meeting or two, feel free to ask to see some examples of their work. They should be able to demonstrate their value to you as a client. If they balk at this request, it might be time to right-mind your way outta there.

Deciding Between Now and Later

If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. No, we’re not quoting your mom (although she is right, and her deviled eggs are amazing). Some things are just plain true, whether we want them to be or not. 

That said, there’s getting it done right and getting it done right in an acceptable time frame. But how do you prioritize effectively when you have a million things to do, and they all need to be done right now? Well, this, too, comes down to delegation. 

Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? That magnificent tortoise won his race—and he did it without expending stress or frenetic energy. It’s time to slow down and let the experts tell you what is most critical to do now versus what can wait until later. 

To be clear, we don’t mean you should just delegate ALL the things. Even a large, experienced team can’t undertake and correctly attend to all the items your business requires right at the start. You have to be willing to be available and involved (to a degree) to make sure everyone is starting off on the right foot.

Any agency worth its salt has a good feel for which things are imperative and critical to handle right now—like yesterday right now—and which things might be bugging the crap out of you but can wait until a little bit further down the road. 

It might be uncomfortable, but it’s time to trust that someone knows better than you what needs to be done—and in what order—to reach your business goals. 

If you are interviewing a marketing agency and they aren’t giving you ideas of the order in which to do things, making suggestions, and substantiating their suggestions with tangible information that makes sense and is easy to follow, you may want to look elsewhere.

To Oversee or Not Oversee

We’ve already established that you need help and don’t have enough time (and maybe know-how) to achieve it all. Congratulations! You’re like a new parent. You are clearly running your own business! So, how will you decorate the new office? Pink? Blue? Or maybe even a gender-neutral green?

We joke, but the truth is that if you have invested the time and effort to conceptualize and start your own business, it IS like your baby! You don’t want to have to hand over anything—let alone everything—to an outside entity, but it can’t be helped. One person can only do so much. 

So, if you absolutely must outsource certain parts of your business that you secretly wish you could breastfeed into its college years, should you insist on overseeing those deliverables or not? 

Well, this can depend on a few things. 

• How much time do you actually have? If you are like most new business owners, you are working on your new business as a side gig until you see if it’s going to sink … or hopefully swim! That means you might not have a ton of time. Even if you are all-in with your new venture, focusing solely on your goals and budding projects, new businesses can take off fast, requiring that most of your attention go to your new clients and customers as you establish a solid rapport with your market. If this happens and you still have the time to oversee all marketing products before they take the stage and you want to, then oversee away!
• You know your product, but you don’t know the business of marketing. If you are an expert on widgets, but anything and everything to do with selling and marketing them eludes you, then overseeing the efforts of your marketing team probably isn’t totally necessary. Remember, your goal is to have more time for what matters to you, not more time to micromanage the people who are trying to help you succeed. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to stand back and let the experts do their job.
• You have a very specific vision for your product and brand. You want your brand to be accurately represented and portrayed in a way that makes you proud to be behind it, and so should your team. If you have distinct visions of sugar plums dancing in your head that cannot be precisely conveyed to and easily reproduced by marketing experts, then you should prepare to be more hands-on and available to  oversee at least some of the work being done for you.

Consider overseeing just the early stages of content and development. That way, you can make sure you feel comfortable with whatever is being produced. Then, once you are confident in who you’ve chosen to represent you, you can set the team free to fly on their own.

Another option might be overseeing some aspects but not others. Like cracking open Pandora’s box or leaving an Ouija board unattended, email campaigns can’t be unsent or undone in the same way that social media posts can.

If you need a safety net in place, you may insist on seeing emails before they go out but you’re okay with daily social media being scheduled without your express consent over every post.

Choosing to oversee one or the other can offer you hours of additional free time per week, but the choice is ultimately yours to make.

How much and why you choose to delegate is something an agency should be happy to work with you on. If they tell you to butt out and stay in your lane without offering you the option of some oversight, you might want to consider whether or not that agency is for you. 

Remember: This is your baby. Your business. Your brand. You should feel comfortable overseeing at least some of what goes into shaping and amplifying it. That said, if you picked the right-minded people mentioned at the beginning of this article, you might just be able to trust that they will go above and beyond on your behalf—as it should be. 

Ferris Bueller, You’re My Hero

Let’s face it: If you’re paying someone money to advertise for you, odds are, they know what they’re doing. Going back to the idea of right-minded people, you want a team with members in the right place at the right time to make your efforts a success. 

If you don’t have an MBA (and maybe even if you do), you probably don’t know the ins and outs of ALL aspects of marketing. If you did, you likely wouldn’t need an agency, and you probably wouldn’t even be reading this article. 

The point is that you want a team of experts working on your behalf who are on top of the latest trends and know how to reach your desired audience. When you choose to delegate, you want to do so to a team of folks who wow you with their knowledge of specific content, processes, tools, and methods to help you achieve your end goals. 

If you talk to the team and they don’t wow you at least a couple of times with their competency and innovative minds, you might not want to utilize their services. When you finally do choose to delegate to someone, you want them to be amazing and wildly talented at what they do; you want them to be your creative, innovative marketing heroes who will break out of the ordinary mold to help you stand out. 

It’s not inappropriate to ask to see bios of the individuals on a team. You can look for awards and degrees, but we’ll be the first to tell you some of the most talented people we know are wallflowers who could never be baited into a contest. They know their own skills and don’t need to prove them in competitions. That said, you can always ask for the sample collateral mentioned above.

You Can’t Do It Alone

More than just ensuring everything gets done in a timely fashion, outsourcing your marketing can actually prevent you from squandering important mental resources that help you see your venture through tough times.

Delegating can help you overcome some of the difficult fits and starts businesses often experience. It gives you the room to put your attention and focus where it needs to be so your business can grow the way you want it to. 

Whether you choose to go with a right-hand man (or woman) or you want a full team behind you, whether you jump on doing some things now while waiting until later for others, or whether you need full oversight versus periodic check-ins, effective and successful delegation spans a widely unique spectrum.

It’s up to you to decide what’s best for you and for your business. Just remember, you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) do it alone. If you’ve forgotten that, you might need to revisit Step 1. 

Reach out to The Cognitive Creative today for a complimentary consultation and a free brand analysis for your business. With years of helping people brand, develop, and grow their businesses successfully, we can help you market, smarter!