The Art of Delegating: Finding the Who, Not How, to Grow Your Business (After the Show)

Welcome to Rooted in Retail After the Show

Crystal Vilkaitis: Well, hello, hello, and welcome to after the show, I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis, and here we discuss this week’s episode. And I share what my big takeaway was from this episode. And we go a little deeper on that. So welcome to after the show, we air this on the podcast, as well as in our private Facebook group for Rooted in Retail. If you’re not a member yet, go to Facebook, search for Rooted in Retail. Join us there. That’s where all the conversations are happening.

About this week’s episode with Miranda Heslip of Cloud Nine Pajamas

Crystal Vilkaitis: Now, this week’s guest was a Miranda Heslip, who is one of the co owners of cloud nine pajamas. And we had such an incredible conversation about social media, email marketing, and making money in your sleep.

And as much as I want to talk about making money in our sleep today in after the show, because that was so certainly a big takeaway for me from this episode, I felt Miranda did a really good job talking about it and breaking it down. And what we discuss in this week’s episode, every single retailer needs to be doing. Every retailer.

If you haven’t listened to Miranda’s episode yet, you need to make time for that episode. She’s not kidding when you can make money in your sleep. And I think it’s such a big missed opportunity for retailers. But again, I feel like Miranda did a really good job talking about it in the episode.

Finding the who (not how) to grow your business

Crystal Vilkaitis: Where I want to go for after the show today is about.

Who, not how, and knowing enough, but not needing to know it all.

So Miranda mentioned having somebody help her with her social media as she went on her maternity leave, helping the planning and creating. She talked about hiring a person that helped them with their e commerce website, which significantly helped grow the website.

She shares those results in the episode. she’s talked about how she runs the store with her sisters. One of her sisters does the hiring and Miranda does the marketing. And it is a team approach. And when it comes to retail and running a business, and there are so many things that you’re doing every single day, and there is a solid chance there’s something on your list that you should not be doing.

And this could be probably on your list for your personal life as well as your business life. And, um, and there might be a lot of things on that list. There is a great book by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy called Who Not How. And it’s a quick read. If you’ve never heard of it, if you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

The whole concept here. Is that we’re not learning how to do everything ourselves. We’re not the experts. We’re not going to do everything ourself. We have to figure out who the who’s are that can really support the business and take us to where we want to go. And so this is where you do got to get really clear on where do you want to go?

The vision of the business, how are you going to get there? And who’s going to help you get there because you’re not going to get there all by yourself. And when we think about, you know, in this week, Miranda was talking about her e commerce store and how they’re really crushing it with their e com sales.

And a lot of retailers are not crushing it with their e com sales, at least the ones that I talked to from a small business perspective. And I would say that one of the big reasons they’re not crushing it is because It’s still up to the owner to be the one who is updating the website, creating the graphics in Canva, marketing the website, running ads for the website.

You’re doing all the website stuff in addition to everything you have to do for your brick and mortar, which is A ton. You can’t do all those successfully together. You just can’t. if you’re managing your brick and mortar store and your e commerce store all by yourself with no help successfully, will you come be on the show?

Because we need to hear from you. I need to hear how you’re doing it. Do you sleep? Like, how are you doing it? You just can’t. It’s all about the who, not how. When it comes to those things that really put out your fire, you know, maybe doing the, we’re going to just use the e commerce site as an example, because that’s what we talked about this week in the episode.

So let’s say that you are just like, you hate logging onto Shopify. You hate getting your spreadsheets from your vendors and making sure the images aren’t blurry. And then you’ve got to take photos and get those photos on for the website. And then you’ve got to do all the marketing and you’re setting up your ads.

And now you’re in business suite or ads manager. You’re I mean, like you’re clicking these buttons to get the product live, to run the ads, to drive the traffic, and you’re totally. put out by it. You’re just like, this is draining my energy. Something you have to remember is that we only have a certain amount of energy every single day.

And when we are using our energy On things that drain us, it’s going to take a lot more energy to do those things, which takes away energy from other aspects of our life, our business, our family, our friends, ourselves. And so we’re, we have to really be strategic on how we’re spending that energy and you, the energy that you give to that, let’s say the eCommerce site, you might be able to do so much more with that energy.

Okay. That lights you up and actually doing things that give you more energy being with your customers or having a day off and spending time with your family, taking a vacation. Like some of those can give you that extra energy and fill you up. Maybe you love merchandising. You love getting new shipments and you love putting it all out.

Like maybe whatever that is that you love doing. It can give you extra energy. So don’t do those things that are totally draining you and stealing from the other aspects of your business and your life. You’ve got to get out of that. You will not grow. You will not scale. If you keep operating that way.

That’s a fast track to Burnout, to Unhappiness to being like waking up one day being like, I’m just over it. I don’t even have any energy to do anything in this business anymore.

So who, not how I would love for you to write a list of what are the things that are totally draining your energy and, and look, some of these things you might just have to be doing right now.

I completely understand that we can’t just outsource everything with the snap of our fingers that we have the right people. We have the right budget, all the things. The first part of this is just getting really clear on how our time is being spent and our energy is being spent because you might be like, Oh, well this thing only takes me an hour a week.

I can keep doing it. I have one of those things where an hour a week, I, it took me about an hour to 90 minutes a week to go in and, and just categorize all of our income. Okay. Any of the sales that came in for crystal media, I’d go into QuickBooks every Monday afternoon and I would just categorize it to the different things.

So we had good books, right? And it was just one of those things that I was like, I would kind of dread and it’s like, Oh, it’s Monday again. I got to do this thing. I feel like I put it off and then maybe I didn’t do it on Monday. I was like, Oh, I’ll just do a Tuesday and then it kind of wears on me. And it was taking more energy than just an hour or 90 minutes of my time.

And so I was talking to Pauline about it and she’s like, I could do that. You know? And I’m like, great. And at first I was like, no, I need to be the one who does it. I want to see, I want to categorize the money. I like seeing the money coming in and I feel good like by categorizing it. But then a few weeks later I was like, I don’t, I don’t want to do this.

Let’s just have Pauline do it. So I resisted it at first and then I let go and I let her do it and I I don’t miss it one one bit. If she was like, you know, I can’t do this anymore. All of a sudden I had to do it. I’d be so upset. I would be so sad. I don’t want to do that. It feels so great. I have moved on so fast from that.

It’s like, I never even did it. So I want you to make, I want you to just get clarity on what are those things, even if they only take you an hour a week or just draining your energy.

And is there somebody on the next step is, is there somebody that you can delegate this to who not how. Maybe you already have that person.

Great. Maybe you don’t yet. Maybe you have to find that person. and in today’s episode, Miranda gives some really good, or not today, but in this week’s episode, Miranda gives really good, tips on hiring people, which I know we all struggle with. And so she, I love her tips that she shared. So be sure again, you listen to that episode and you might need to find that person.

They might also be finding a company and, you know, here at crystal media, we, we train social media. So let’s say you have somebody on your team, but they don’t know social or they don’t really know what’s working now or how to set up ads or any of those things. Like they feel kind of having a hard time with the content.

Ooh, this didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Where do I find certain things in my. Insights, you know, we get questions every single day from our insider members. So maybe that’s one of your who’s is just getting support for that person and, and they become an insider member or they’re learning from somebody else.

There’s so many resources out there. We’re one of them. Our insider membership is one of them. At Crystal media, we could do your listings. We can run your Facebook ads. I always say, I don’t think store owners need to be running their own Facebook ads, like for you to sit down and be at a computer and click the buttons and you really should be managing and monitoring and optimizing these.

Daily, or maybe it’s every 72 hours you do, you set everything up, you let it run. We want to check, make sure it’s running, make sure you set everything up correctly, make sure it’s being delivered. But then in 72 hours, we want to make sure we’re going back and seeing how it’s working. Ideally you’re testing several different creatives, the image, the copy, the video, you’re testing different audiences, your email list, your lookalikes, people who have bought, people who have visited the store, people who have attended this event.

People based off of interests, location, we’re testing audiences, all of that takes so much time. And unless you absolutely love being inside of meta and the meta maze, and you know your way around the meta maze, you do not want to spend your energy on that. That probably drains. So much of your energy. I know that’s one thing that drains my energy.

I have not set up an ad probably in over a year. I let my team focus on it. It changes so much that I just tried to get in there the other day. And it’s so different. And I had a hard time navigating it. This is why I have a team. I have a who. I have who’s, and I just feel like for retailers to navigate all that, that is going to, it just takes so much of your time.

How else can your time be spent? Probably in more productive ways. And you have a who that helps you similar to how Miranda brought a who to help with her website and to grow that out, grow that, that whole channel out for her. And so that is the focus today is who, not how get clear where your energy is being spent.

What can you delegate? Do you have the right person today?

You don’t need to know it all you just need to know enough

Crystal Vilkaitis: and then the final thing Miranda said, but know enough. Like you don’t need to be an expert in Facebook advertising, but you need to know enough about the questions that you would be asking to make sure that that person or that company is delivering the right service and is doing the right thing for you.

And so, you want, you can find out those questions in a lot of different ways. You can have them show you, you know what they’re doing and you can log in. That might feel kind of overwhelming still, but still have them show you things like Miranda talked about in this episode. You can really see like, do they know what they’re doing as they’ve, you know, walk through the back end of things.

There are so many resources now, obviously on YouTube. I spend so much time on YouTube just learning for fun. I just, I love like, that’s what I’ll do on my lunch break. That’s what I do at night. Rarely am I watching a show. I love going to YouTube as well as TikTok. And learning things. And so if you’re, if you’re like, okay, I got to outsource, you know, the QuickBooks or my ads or e comm, go to YouTube, start putting in some things to just learn enough.

The basics, like what are Shopify basics? What are the basics to driving traffic to a Shopify website? Just so you know, some of those, what kind of questions would I ask? You might even find some videos of people that are coaching you on. Knowing enough to manage somebody on your team. You don’t need to become an expert.

Some of these things, it’s impossible to keep up with. In addition, everything else you’re doing. So let go of it. Don’t resist letting go like I did because you waste more time. You waste more energy. Free yourself. You have the resources you need. You can learn on YouTube for free. You might have somebody on the team that you could delegate that to or finding that budget.

Keep in mind, this is something that’s held me back in the past from hiring is you think that you’re bringing on, let’s say you have a 60, 000 a year person that you’re bringing on that’s going to help you with your Facebook advertising and your e commerce store. And we feel like I have to pay 60, 000 right now up front.

Not at all. You could do a two month or three month trial. We do a 90 day trial. And so then you calculate, okay, how much am I going to be spending? Well, that’s 15, 000. I will be spending it over those three months versus 60, 000. And there’s so many creative ways that you could do this with your budget as well.

but keep in mind that it’s not like a permanent. Yes, it’s not necessarily permanent. That person could leave, you could let them go. It’s not this one year full on commitment of somebody you’ve never even met. You don’t know if they’re legit. You don’t know if they’ve got these, you know, reviews or testimonials, or they’re credible.

Any of those things, it can just be a shortened period of time too. So don’t let that hold you back. Get the help, outsource those things that drain your energy. It’s about who, not how, and then know enough to make sure that that person is on track helping you reach your goals. And you’re just going to free up that space, that time to do more of what you love.

And that is a big part of why I wanted to create this show, Rooted in Retail, was to help retailers. Build the store of their dreams. And I bet that one of your dreams is to have more of that time freedom, to have less of that draining, of that energy being drained from you. We want to go to bed feeling fulfilled, like, yes, I had a good day, I had a productive day, I had a freeing day, I had a fun day, I whatever.

And my energy was used in ways that really fills me up. Versus my energy was used and I’m so drained and it feels so heavy. So focus on that.

My ask of you

Crystal Vilkaitis: And I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you did, if you loved Miranda, if you learned something, here’s the biggest ask I can, I can ask. Go write a review. If you’re listening right now on Apple, you can go to your Apple podcast, go to the root in retail show, go to where it says reviews.

You have to do the star rating first. Hopefully it’s a five star experience for you. After you do the stars, you can write in your review. If you’re on Spotify, you can write a. Q and a, that’s the way I can see that from you, but leave a review. It would mean the world. And, I’m rooting for you. I can’t wait to see you next week.

Coming Up Next Week

Crystal Vilkaitis: We’ve got our very own Steph Bichard from crystal media. We are talking about social media. We are talking about what is working today. How do you get actual engagement? Like real true engagement on these platforms. So we don’t feel like we’re talking to ourself. And how do you actually drive foot traffic?

using social media. Like it’s great to be posting, but I want that foot traffic. I want people in my store. We’re talking about it next week with stuff. So be sure to tune in. I’m roo