When Doing It Yourself Costs You More
January 31, 2026
Ever wonder why when you hire more employees your workload gets bigger not smaller? Imagine you’re a business owner. You just hired your tenth employee. This new person was hired to do a specific job. It could be any job but let’s say you hire this person to manage your YouTube channel. You shoot videos of you doing a podcast or teaching on a topic you have expertise in, all for the purpose of marketing your business. You decide on a topic and write an outline or a script, shoot the video and hand it off to your new employee. Their job is to edit the video, create a thumbnail, write a SEO optimized description, and publish it to YouTube. And then they have to create social media posts and hand those back to you so you can post them to your accounts. I know, you’re thinking AI can do all that. That’s true but then I would have to start over and think of another example when this one works perfectly fine if we just ignore AI for another 2 minutes.
Here’s where the problem starts. You start looking over the newly edited video, the thumbnail, and the social media posts. You go to post the the social media content. You decide you would do it differently so you make changes. Now you’ve completely rewritten the entire thing. Then you have a look at the YouTube thumbnail. Something doesn’t feel right so you make more changes. Next you review the video to see how the editing went. Again, you see something you would have done differently.
Crickets
You make the changes, the video is published, the social media posts are posted, links are pointed to the YouTube video and…Crickets.
So now you’re paying someone to do all this work and then you have to redo half of it. To make things worse the project bombed. Must be because of the half you didn’t redo, right? You start to utter that same old story that we all rely on in cases like this- “I just need to do it myself because they can’t do it right”, or “It’s easier to just do it myself.” And this little gem- “No one can do it as good as I can” (that’s your ego by the way).
Here It Comes
Here’s the thing. Remember when I said you just hired your tenth employee? So now multiply this story by 10. You have been through this scenario over and over, every time you hire someone new. That’s the formula for burnout. You have built yourself a trap, walked in and shut the door and you can’t see a way out. If you are in a similar situation don’t feel bad. Well, you should maybe feel a little bit bad. But you’re not alone. We all do this. I used to do it as a general contractor building houses and in other businesses.(And it's still so tempting!) All entrepreneurs have done this to some degree. That’s why 68% of business owners report experiencing some level of burnout. What’s the solution to this problem?
Knowing How
Being willing to delegate the work isn’t enough. You have to know how to delegate. Problem is, no one taught us how. They just said do it.
1. Let’s go back to the case of marketing your YouTube video. Do you have a YouTube system to follow? Do you have a style guide for your editing and for the thumbnail? Do you have clearly defined brand colors and brand fonts? If you don’t have any of those available, or if you haven’t taken the time to train your new employee in using your YouTube system they will never satisfy you.
2. Train that person to do the job the way you like it but allow them to do what they do best. If they have a good amount of knowledge and a track record of success in doing the type of work you need done allow them to do it. Give them training and guidance and give them a chance. You never know, they might make you a YouTube superstar if you let them.
3. Make sure you’ve actually put the person in the correct position. For example, some people are brilliant at analyzing the data and stats for YouTube videos but they might suck at editing and creating artwork. If you don’t find that out before putting them in that position then you’re mostly to blame for the outcome. Have some actual one on one conversations with your team members to make sure they’re doing what they’re good at and what they like doing. I know it might sound scary but remember they are people just like you.
Why does doing it yourself cost you more? When you have to spend your time doing the repetitive daily tasks required to run a business you’re just treading water, not making progress. Growth slows down. Your mind is occupied with those tasks and you’re not creating and planning like an entrepreneur should be doing.
The YouTube channel is just one example. This all applies to any task you need to delegate. Create a system to delegate and use that system. And be patient. It takes time for a new person to take over a task. There will be rough spots. Keep moving forward!
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