High-Ticket Coaching

Why Aren’t You Delegating?

April 3, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

(Stop Being a Control Freak in Business)

How comfortable would you feel about asking your friends and family to do a favour for you? How about asking a stranger on the street to help you with a task?

Now you might or might not feel comfortable with asking other people for help. But most entrepreneurs are very reluctant to delegate tasks. And it’s usually because of two reasons.

One possible reason is that you’re the type of entrepreneur who is a control freak. You don’t want to give up your authority. Another possible reason is you are afraid the person doing the task will make a mistake.

As a result, you become a one-person business doing all of the work yourself, working until exhaustion, with no time to reflect on how to move your business to the next level.

However, the sooner you start delegating, the sooner you can grow your business.

You don’t need to be a CEO or the boss of a couple of employees before you start delegating. Sharing the work will ease your workload and free up your time for other tasks, like planning out the direction of your business.

You can start delegating as soon as you’re ready. You don’t even have to wait until you’re rich.

Have a look at my business for example. People tell me because I’m rich, I can delegate. But the opposite is true. It’s because I delegate that I’m rich. It’s a chicken and egg thing.

So if you have your own business and you aren’t delegating, start now.

Here are some tips to motivate you to be less controlling and more at ease with delegating to other people.

Watch this video on why you should be delegating more for your business.

Start With The Right Mindset

If you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you won’t be making the money to maximize your time. And if you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you’re not likely to be delegating when you have more money.

One reason why you’re not delegating is because you’re thinking about saving. You want to wait until the future when you can afford to start paying other people to do tasks.

The opposite is true. You’ll start saving money when you can afford to put money aside. To make enough money to put some aside, you need to free up your time to work on generating more revenue. You can’t do that if you’re saving money by doing all the routine tasks yourself.

You need to start developing a millionaire mindset now.

Right now, for every dollar that comes in, you want to set aside ten cents. You’re cultivating a habit early on. Then when you have a hundred times more money, you’re already used to saving a bit of everything you earn.

So start the habit and delegate small tasks. Let your less important responsibilities go gradually and as you get some good experience working with others, keep delegating more from there. If you’re still reluctant, it might be because you have limiting beliefs.

Why You Aren’t Delegating

What’s holding people back from delegating? They can come up with enough reasons to last a lifetime.

For example, they think they can do the job better themselves. They don’t trust others to do it because the other person might make a mistake. Or the other person isn’t qualified to do it or they already have enough to do.

Or they believe they are the only person on this planet who can do it so they can’t ask anyone else to do it.

All of those reasons are nothing more than limiting beliefs. None of it is true, and having those beliefs doesn’t help your business. You don’t get anything done, and you stay on the hamster wheel.

There are some tasks that you can delegate to others.

Responding to emails
Responding to customer service
Scheduling business and personal appointments
Writing to new prospects
Bookkeeping, graphic design, website development
Travel arrangements

All of these tasks and more, you can delegate to other people. If you aren’t delegating, there are four big fears that are holding you back.

1. Fear Of Losing Control

You fear what could happen if you lose control. Maybe the other person will make a mistake and it will cost you time or money to fix.

You fear you could be rejected if you ask someone for help. You’re worried that this person will think you’re incompetent because you’re not doing the task yourself. Or you’re inadequate.

This is especially true of men. Women are more willing to ask for help. Men are taught to be strong and macho so if you don’t do something, you’re incompetent and you might lose your sense of honour.

Maybe you don’t fear losing control, and you’re not afraid to ask for help, but you like to watch every dollar you spend very carefully.

2. Fear Of The Cost

Sometimes entrepreneurs think the cost is too high and they can’t afford it. They want to save money. However, you need to think about how much your time is worth.

If you want to make a million bucks a year, your work has to be worth $1700 an hour. If you don’t delegate, then you’re losing $1700 an hour. Isn’t your time worth so much more?

Even if you think you can’t afford to delegate, start the habit and free up your time. You can’t be afraid of losing money, or having a bad experience.

3. Fear Of A Bad Experience

You may have tried to delegate in the past and it turned into delegation hell because the person you trusted and paid didn’t deliver as promised.

To avoid that, create a document. Provide your consultant or assistant with the information they need, the steps they need to take, and your expectations. They are less likely to make mistakes when expectations are clear.

If they still manage to make mistakes, then hire someone else. Or delegate to three people and see who does the job the best. Keep the good one and let go of the rest.

Another way to think about it is this: Have you ever had a bad meal in the past? Did that stop you from eating ever again?

For that same reason, don’t let a bad experience stop you from looking for the right person.

4. Fear Of Not Finding The Right Person

Hiring the right person is a numbers game that you won’t get right every time. In the big scheme of things, it’s not going to matter. Six months to a year from now, you’re not going to remember the minor errors. You just need to get better at filtering out the bad matches.

Here’s an example. One of my business partners had a business for 15 years. He wasn’t good at hiring or managing people.

One day, I asked him to fire everybody. He didn’t want to do such a thing because he considered his employees as friends.

The experience turned out to be a business lesson for him. All the people my business partner thought were his good friends tried to get to every last dime when they were fired. One even kept the iPad he had been given.

Employees are employees.

Hiring people is a skill. There are so many steps to choosing the right one, from filtering to coaching them to training them to develop new skills.

The way I hire people and run my company is a bit unusual because I run this virtual empire. I choose to work from home. I don’t want to commute or go to an office. When my mentees call me, I’m in my underwear, not my suit. I like to be at home.

I get up, do my morning routine, and get to work. It saves me a lot of time. But that’s a personal preference. It also means because I don’t see my team face-to-face most of the time, so I need to trust them to do their responsibilities. So when I hire, I choose people who can work independently.

Why You Need To Delegate Now

If you want your business to grow, you need to learn to get comfortable with delegating now, not in the future. Your time is valuable, so overcome your fears and start finding tasks you can ask other people to do for you. Most importantly, establish a hiring system so you create a team of people you can trust.

What tasks do you delegate to other people? Comment below.

How To Read People: Mastering the Winning Edge In Negotiations

March 12, 2019 by Dan Lok Leave a Comment

Many people have hurt loved ones and lost business deals because they misunderstood or misread important cues. But what if you could strip away the masks that people wear and decode the real meaning in their words so these situations don’t happen?

If you could strip away the masks, wouldn’t business deals be so much easier to complete? You see, one of the most valuable skills that you can master in life and in business is the ability to read people. It will give you the winning edge in mastering negotiations, in business and in life.

I have the ability to read people because I meet so many people every single day. I’ve met thousands and thousands of people face-to-face.

Today I’m going to teach you some of the fundamentals on how to read people that will help you in business and in all areas of your life.

First, let’s define reading people. It’s by observing people, sometimes from a distance and knowing something about them, such as getting a feeling without them telling you. The way they talk, the way they walk, the way they stand.

It’s important to know these things because if you’re in sales, business, or negotiations, you want to have that upper edge when it comes to negotiating with or influencing them. This also applies to relationships with family. If you can read them, you have an advantage.

Watch this video about how to read people in business and in life.

Clue 1: Reading Their Eye Movement

Let’s begin with the body part that’s a natural truth and lie revealer. When you’re talking with people, look where their eye movement goes. Here’s a very simple example.

If someone is afraid to make direct eye contact with you, and they’re looking down, it’s like they are hiding. They don’t want to make eye contact. They may also be shy or intimidated.

If they’re looking at the top left corner, it means they are trying to remember something. For example, if you ask them, “Who is your best friend from high school?” and they look to their left, you know they are probably telling the truth.

If they’re looking to the top right corner, they are constructing an image. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are lying, it’s more like they’re visualizing something. For visual people, when you’re getting them to picture a concept, structure, or process, you might see them looking to the right.

If they are looking at the bottom left corner, it means they are having an internal dialogue. You could be disagreeing with the person. It could be their beliefs are different than what they’re hearing and they’re conflicted.

So if you give them a piece of advice and they’re looking to the left, chances are they are disagreeing. You’re challenging their beliefs.

If they are looking at the bottom right corner, they are digging into some deep feelings and emotions and trying to create a sensory experience. For example, they could be imagining the wind in their hair as they cruise the highway in their first convertible.

The eyes have an abundance of information about a person, but what if they are too far away for you to see their eyes? Their distance from you gives clues as well.

Eye movement gives you clues about what someone is thinking.

Clue 2: Reading People’s Distance

When you’re communicating with someone and they are far away, it means they aren’t listening and they aren’t interested in what you have to say.

If they’re getting closer and closer as you’re talking to them, it means they are responding positively to what you’re saying to them.

Most of our body language comes from non-verbal gestures such as how close or far you stand from someone. The gestures you are using and whether you wave your hands when you speak all show how expressive you are.

Physical touching also gives important cues. What does it mean if you’re sitting close to your friend and you touch her knee with your hand? What does it mean if you’re sitting close to someone, but that person is your client and you touch her knee?

Our ability to understand non-verbal cues can be the difference between disaster and deep connection. A touch can be offensive if done incorrectly, like a hand on the knee at a business meeting. A touch can be reassuring like a hand on the shoulder after hearing about tragic news. And this awareness doesn’t just apply to one-on-one situations.

More and more business meetings are happening on video screens. You can learn a lot from your observations. If your client is sitting back in his chair and looking at the floor during the meeting, he is sending you a message. You need to change what you’re talking about to get his attention back or lose the deal.

When it comes to communication, 55 percent of what we say is said through our body language. The rest of our communication is through the tone of our voice. Only 7 percent of our message is actually with the words we use.

In fact, if you’re confident in your understanding of body language, you can use it to strike up a wordless dialogue with your clients and build a connection with them.

Clue 3: Reading Someone By Mirroring Them

When you’re talking with someone and you can see they are trying to mirror your body language or copy you, then it means that person is trying to establish some kind of bond with you.

This is something you can do in negotiations. When you’re closing a deal in front of someone and that person sits back and crosses their legs, you can do the exact same thing as well.

It’s like doing a dance. At first, you may be mirroring them, and later you are leading them and they are mirroring you, without even being conscious of it. This is a way to build rapport, but be careful not to do it too obviously.

Clue 4: Reading Arm Movement

Body language will tell you a lot about the other person, but always remember the bigger picture. Let’s go back to the meeting room example. Sometimes, these places have the heat turned down, so people cross their arms to keep warm. In this case, they aren’t reacting to you.

But at other times, if someone has their arms crossed the entire time you’re talking, it means they’re trying to protect themselves. They’re shielding themselves from influence. If they’re more open to what you’re saying by leaning in or putting their hands on their chin, they’re listening to you.

Now, if a person is playing with their hands too much while talking, it actually means, “I like this.” Or when they are thinking, their fingers are tapping. Watch for these gestures. If you’re in the middle of a negotiation, the tapping could mean they are seriously considering your offer.

Clue 5: Reading Leg and Knee Positions

Legs and knees can give you as much information as arms and hands. If someone is nervous, or ADD, or scatterbrained, they’ll bouncing their knee or their leg. Shaking a leg under the table means they are nervous and you have the upper hand.

If you are talking to someone and you can see that they are pointing their knees towards you, they’re interested in what you are saying. That’s great bonding. But if their knees are pointing away from you, that means they want to get out of there. So if their knees and feet are pointing to the exit, it’s time to stop talking.

A person’s body language is like the close-captioning feature on your screen, adding more information to what you’re already hearing. Pay as much attention to a person’s body language as their words if you want to get the entire message.

If you want to bond with someone, do a quick test. If you touch them and they pull back a bit quickly, release, don’t touch. It means it’s no good.

Those are some of the fundamental skills on how to read people. Practice these techniques on your colleagues, friends, business partners, your spouse… and see if they work for you.

Are there other clues you want to know? Comment below.