Sometimes- it pays to follow my own advice.
A few weeks ago, a potential client kindly pointed out my website contact form no longer worked. My typical answer was “Well no one looks at it anyway and I just don’t have time for it”. Her reply was blistering. I don’t remember her words – but the message I took away was “What century are you living in? Everybody uses the web today. If your web presence is not good, your professional reputation is also not good”.
Ouch.
So, I started digging into my website. The more I dug, the more I was lost and frustrated, and the more time I was not spending on my client facing projects and business. Wordpress is supposed to be easy, for non-developpers, so surely I could fix this. So, I dug harder and lost more and more time. Persistance is a strength of mine… 🙂
Then – the light bulb went on. As I was writing my todo list for the following week, and listing out the things I wanted to accomplish on our new e-learning program about Delegation, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Here am I developing the content for a program on delegation and am not making progress because I am getting lost and frustrated in WordPress. Obviously – I need to delegate! But to whom? And What? And How?
So, I started with the WHAT.
- My website is a place holder at the moment as my business and focus is in transition and I want that focus to be a bit sharper before I pay for a really professional website – so I just wanted it cleaned up and working properly, not redesigned. And- I have a lot going on right now. There is no time to develop a fresh new approach and look and focus for another few months.
I then thought about the WHO.
- I remembered there was a website called freelancer something. So, I found www.freelancer.com and signed up. I posted my project in a few easy clicks. Within minutes, I had 20-30 people offering to help me. OMG – how do I choose? I almost quit here… I had no idea. So, I did what I should do more often – I read the “Help”. There were some great suggestions. After browsing through about a page of these offers, I finally found 2 that seemed to have good reviews from a lot of people, with great comments. I asked them both to chat. One of them really got what I wanted to do so I decided to jump. The company I chose is called Jiffystack and I really really recommend them.
Finally, I looked at the HOW
- We agreed on breaking the project into two pieces and agreed what went into each piece. Despite it being obvious I did not anything … (the first question he asked me – I had to go back and ask – what is that and where do I find it?) – he treated me with respect and consistently outperformed in terms of speed, quality of delivery and new ideas to improve what was already there. When we reached the first milestone, he sent me a list of what he had done versus what we had agreed and asked if I agreed if we have met the first milestone.
The outcome is – within a week, my contact form is again working, I have new functionality that I did not even know existed and I have a document explaining with pictures (:-)) how I update each of the pages and pieces.
What are you holding on to that could be delegated to someone else? How might that someone else benefit from your delegation?
