We keep beating the dead horse, and we won’t stop. You should delegate almost everything!
Don’t take our word for it, though. I was recently listening to 80/20 Sales and Marketing on Audible, and it was so good I bought the hard copy so that I could take notes and highlight certain sections.
I didn’t expect the author, Perry Marshall, to discuss this, but when he started to echo our messaging, I couldn’t help but get excited. So, here are three key takeaways from his book:
1. In one chapter called “Do You Want to Make $10 an Hour or $10,000,” he lists all of the $10 tasks you should delegate right away: Talking to unqualified prospects, cold-calling, building and fixing stuff on your website, doing expense reports, social media, cleaning or sorting (email and papers), attending meetings, driving to meetings, performing basic customer service, and, funny enough, spelling everything correctly.
This seems obvious, but so many lawyers we talk to insist they cannot delegate these things because they “don’t have the money.” (Read more HERE about why that’s incorrect)
For lawyers especially, why would you do even $100/hour tasks yourself when we charge, on average, $300/hour? It seems so obvious on paper (instead of $100/hour, I can bill ad make $300/hour), but in practice, it’s a tough concept to grasp (but if I do that task myself, I’m saving $100). According to Perry Marshall, here are the $100/hour tasks you should immediately delegate (if you want to use that time to make an additional $200/hour): solving a problem for a prospective or existing customer, talking to a qualified prospect (we’re all guilty), writing an email to prospects or customers (no longer guilty), creating marketing tests and experiments (we agree – get one of our Marketing Assistants today!), managing SEO/digital media campaigns yourself (a no-brainer if you ask me – this is too easy to mess up yourself and can actually cost you thousands of dollars), doing social media well (which is rarely done), outsourcing simple tasks (again – we agree!), and customer follow-up (we’ve happily outsourced this ourselves).
He also discusses the $1,000/hour and $10,000/items, but if you want to learn more about those, email me HERE, and we’ll discuss.
2. In another chapter entitled “Make $1,000/hour Doing What You Love,” Marshall has a simple yet brilliant system for getting rid of items you hate. It’s so simple. It will like anger you that you didn’t think of it first. You’ll probably start to think of the last time you did something you didn’t like to do, but sucked it up and did it anyway. Here it is: put two columns on a sheet of paper, and write down everything you love doing in one column, and everything you hate doing in another. You’ll find the hate column is a mile long, and the love column is nice and short. It makes you happy. We all love only a few things. So, take the hate list, and start delegating everything on it as fast as you can. First, it’s important to note, that just because you don’t like doing these things, doesn’t mean everyone else hates them too. Bookkeeping, for example? I hate it. Some other humans that I don’t understand? Love it. If someone else loves doing the things you hate, let them do it, and do it well. They want that job. You’ll both be happy. Second, by doing less of what you hate, you’ll perform what you love much more effectively, and thus will do a better job. It’s really a win win. So the next time you find yourself saying “okay, Jan, you’ve got one hour to get all this awful crap out of the way so you can get to the stuff you like,” remember this blog. Just give it all away. Even once. Try it. My bet is you’ll never look back.
3. In yet another chapter called “How to Get More $1,000/hour Work Done with a Personal Assistant,” Perry Marshall says: Everyone who makes more than $30/hour should have a personal assistant. Your personal assistant can do just about anything for you, and you’ll easily save 10 hours a week. A high-power personal assistant will be one of your most mission-critical team members.
I personally believe that an excellent administrative assistant will save you more than 10 hours a week and that a good executive receptionist will pay for themselves tenfold by the goodwill they create with your clients.
Additionally, when you hire one of our staffers, you get access to the most talented employees another country has to offer. They’re such a reasonable price that really shouldn’t matter. The kicker is that it also saves you a bundle of money by hiring a virtual assistant overseas at 1.3 the price of a U.S.-based assistant. It’s truly a win-win.
In sum, I’d like to thank Perry Marshall for this unexpected reaffirmation of our mission here at Get Staffed Up – to liberate lawyers with incredible offshore talent by helping them delegate their way to freedom.
