When I became an entrepreneur in 1998, my goal was to work half as much as I did when I was aconsultant in corporate and make the same amount of money. I reached that goal within 2 years. But then, the high tech bubble burst and all my clients went away (I came from high-tech so most of my clients did too) . This time challenged me to figure out how to bring in revenue with the talents I had, but I am grateful as I started running public workshops & seminars and got a ton of”on-the-job” experience. If it wasn’t for that, Workshop University would not have even comeabout. And, about 3 years later, my corporate clients started knocking again and I was back doingcorporate training and balanced both businesses.
Why do I share this story? Because, through all of this, I held strong to my core values of balance and freedom. My motto from that point on was “Work Less, Make More”. This does not come from a place of laziness or greed.It comes from a strong desire to have a full life where work is one part and I get to enjoy a lot of other passions as well. The only way to work less and make more is to leverage -your knowledge, your time and your energy. And, that requires….. that ugly word”Delegate“.
About 2 years ago, I made a commitment to no longer do the things I dislike and to only spend time leveraging my gifts and talents. This has paid off immensely and I want to share with you where you can delegate to grow your workshops & webinars as well:
- Needs of your target market – If you are clear about who your target market is but not sure what they need most and where to find them (so you can market your workshops and webinars to them) you could hire an intern from a local college to do research on that target market. They can hold short informational interviews to find out what your target market is most challenged with, where they hang out and what groups/orgs/ assoc they are part of.
- Where to speak/run webinars-You could hire an assistant/VA or intern to research potential places you could speak or run workshops & webinars for. You provide them who you speak in front of, the industries, demographics and some pointers of where to look and they do the research to come up with associations, organizations, meetup groups…These groups are always looking for speakers!
- Setting up speaking gigs– This is my favorite because I don’t like to do all the initial calling. You could hire a good communications person to email and call the list of orgs/assoc/places to speak and see what their interest is. Once they have an interest, theyhand that contact off to you to connect with. It’s like getting “warm leads” in your inbox.
- Marketing your Workshops/Webinars– Marketing is my least favorite task. Why not hire someone to place listings of your event on listing sites, in local papers and across social media. You provide the content, they do the work.
- Workshop/Webinar Materials – You have handouts/workbooks/marketing collateral for your workshops and webinars. Why not hire an intern to put those packets together or assist in creating the material? You sit with them to discuss what you need and they put it together.
- Setting up/breaking down Workshops/Webinars – It is great when you can run aworkshop and not be the same person to setup the chairs, put the food out and take registrations. Why not hire an intern or assistant to do that? And, when running webinars, it’s nice to have someone on the line tracking questions and comments in the chat box who can gently interrupt you to address it during the webinar so you are not having to muli-task.
Now, you may be thinking, “Yeah, this is all great but I don’t have the money“
- You can actually find great interns at your local college who will do it for the experience or $10/hr.
- You can go on Upwork or Craigslist and list the project you need help with and the $$ you are willing to spend and you will get responses (even if you only have a little to spend).
- You can search Fiverr to see if what you need they have and it will only cost you $5.
If you were to calculate in the last month how many hrs you spent doing any of the tasks above or even thought about doing them and calculate that by your hourly rate, you may be surprised! Why not take just a small portion of that to hire someone else and leverage your time doing the things you are most passionate about? Just sayin’….