Do you find yourself trying to do it all at your child care business, only to find yourself completely overwhelmed, not able to get through that never ending to-do list?

The secret is simple: delegate.

I hear time and time again from my Child Care Success Academy members:

I just can’t get out of overwhelm to grow my business.
I can’t delegate at my child care, no one will do it the way I do it.
I’m having trouble prioritizing, I feel stuck on all the small things.
I can’t get through my to-do list; things just aren’t getting done around here.

Sound familiar? Delegating the smaller tasks to the teachers and staff at your child care will give you the time to focus on what’s important and take your business to the next level. Yet a lot of child care owners have a hard time giving up these smaller tasks because they fear it won’t be done right or exactly the way they would do it.

The one simple concept that will help you to delegate:

I took this phrase from one of my original marketing mentors, Dan Kennedy. The concept goes back to the 80/20 rule. If you haven’t heard me talk about this before, the rule states that 20% of your efforts equal 80% of your outcome.

So in your child care business it’s essential to understand the key components that really make or break your business. These are the top to-do items that really need your attention and your efforts as a child care owner or director. LET GO of perfecting and doing all the rest yourself. That is what you pay people for at your child care; to take over those tasks.

If you want to save a lot of hours in your schedule:

A. Delegate all the small tasks on your to-do list, letting go of the worry that they won’t be done perfect or exactly the way you would do them, trusting that they will still get done to satisfaction.

B. Let  go of the need for perfection on your own smaller tasks

The menial tasks just need to get done and be good enough. Micro-managing these tasks will cause you as a child care owner to spend too much time on the little things and not enough time on the important things.

Post it on your wall. Let yourself know:

The other day on our Child Care Success Academy Gold coaching call we had a client ask us about how to get started with social media. She had setup a Facebook page for her business but she just didn’t have time to post anything and hadn’t been posting for months.

My advice to her was to delegate the social media project to a teacher. It’s easy enough to ask among her teacher team who is interested in making a little bit of an extra bonus every month to take this over. The teacher could then spend two hours a week, perhaps spread out during nap times and covered by a floater, to handle social media.

You can still give the team at your child care some structure and training to finish the tasks you delegate to them but don’t worry if they aren’t doing the job perfect/exactly as you would do. If you continue to micromanage you will NEVER get yourself out of overwhelm.

Delegate the task, give that person a little bit of an extra bonus and more responsibility, which makes them feel good and also allows them to further develop their career and learning. Give them the that structure but also empower them to own the task.

Homework Assignment: Look at your to-do list and figure out what you can delegate. What are the priorities you need to work on that will drive your business to the next level? Highlight those. Then delegate the rest. Figure out a way to take the to-dos off your plate, empower your staff to own those tasks, and realize that good is good enough.

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