Why the work you refuse to delegate is the work that's holding you back
There's a part of me that just went—pardon my language—screw it, I'm done. Just give me a real job somewhere.
That was me a few years ago, watching my first business fall apart.
It wasn't a dramatic collapse. Not a single catastrophic event. Just a slow, grinding overwhelm that took everything—my finances, my relationships, my clients' trust, and nearly my will to continue. Classic business owner burnout.
The cause? Not a bad product. Not a weak market. Not even bad luck.
It was the $10 tasks I refused to let go of.
The Delegation Math Nobody Does
Let me tell you about mowing my lawn—stay with me here, because this is where most business owners go wrong when they think about whether to delegate tasks.
My yard costs $1,350 a year to maintain professionally. Sounds like a lot, right? Money that could go toward vacations, dinners, savings.
But here's what that math actually looks like:
To do it myself, I'd need a $10,000 mower. Weekly trips for gas and supplies. Four to five hours every weekend for 26 weeks. Factor in the prep, the cleanup, the maintenance—that's roughly 145 hours a year.
$1,350 divided by 145 hours = $9.30 an hour.
Minimum wage in Nebraska is $13. Nebraska Dept of Labor minimum wage page
I'd be better off working a five-hour shift at the gas station down the street than mowing my own grass. That's how bad the math is.
What's Your Time Really Worth as a Business Owner?
Now apply that logic to your business.
If you run a company generating $1 million in revenue, and that revenue exists because of you—your relationships, your expertise, your leadership—then your time is worth roughly $500 an hour. At $5 million? You're looking at $2,000 an hour.
This is the business owner time management problem nobody talks about: every hour you spend doing some $10 task is a stupid hour. I hate to use that word because it sounds judgmental, but it's the truth. You just spent $2,000 doing something someone else could have done for ten bucks.
The Hidden Cost of Doing Everything Yourself
When I look back at what killed my first business, I don't point to cash flow or market conditions. I point to myself.
The root cause was me. My wanting to be in control. My thinking I could do it better than everyone else. Every business owner thinks that, and it's 100% false.
The cost of doing everything yourself showed up everywhere:
- Financial ruin. Not from one bad decision, but from a thousand hours spent on work that should have been delegated.
- Lost relationships. Friends and family pushed aside because there was always more to do.
- Eroded trust. Clients who expected an advisor but got someone too overwhelmed to follow through.
- Missed opportunities. A client in Iowa still waiting on a deliverable from April—because there’s always something more urgent.
I can give you all the excuses in the world why things didn't get done. But when we do those things, we actually do lose clients.
Why "I Can't Afford Help" Is Costing You $15,000
I work with a contractor right now who's drowning in social media management. He told me he can't afford a virtual assistant at $200 a week—about $12,000 a year.
I asked him: "What's your average client worth?"
$10,000 to $15,000.
"So if that VA brings in just one client over the entire year, they've paid for themselves. Do you think over 52 weeks they can land you one client?"
He paused. "Yeah, probably."
"Then why are we having this conversation?"
The math on when to hire help for your business isn't complicated. What's complicated is getting business owners to actually do it.
The Opportunity Cost You're Ignoring
Here's the uncomfortable truth: you know when you're losing.
You know it every single week when you don't get to them the way you need to. You know it when you wake up in the middle of the night and go, "Oh man, I forgot to call so-and-so."
You see the post-it notes piling up. You feel the important tasks slipping. You watch clients walk away and you can't even argue with them—because you know you weren't there when they needed you.
Every client I don't reach costs my business $15,000 to $20,000 a year. Lose five clients? That's $100,000. Not in revenue—in profit.
I think it would take me about ten seconds with any business owner to find the opportunity cost lost because of the tasks they're doing every day. Investopedia — Opportunity Cost definition It's such low-hanging fruit that is somehow an untapped market.
Operator vs. Owner: The Decision That Changes Everything
Here's the question I ask every business owner I work with:
Do you want to work 80 hours a week for the rest of your life? Or do you want to build something that's sustainable without you?
That's the decision every business owner has to make. And there's no wrong answer—some people genuinely want to be operators forever.
But if you want to build a real business—one with systems, teams, and processes that work without you grinding at the center—then you have to stop being the limiting factor.
The biggest problem we're up against isn't systems and people and processes. It's the owner. When the owner can get out of the way, then we can make everything else happen.
What Success Looks Like After You Learn to Delegate
My favorite success story is about a snowplow dealer I worked with in Wisconsin.
Years after we worked together, I dropped by unannounced. It was 10 AM. I found him leaned back in his chair, cowboy hat half over his face, feet propped up on the desk.
"You look busy," I laughed.
"I am busy. Got a meeting at one."
"It's ten."
"Yep. I've got time."
That's what it looks like when you delegate tasks as a business owner and build a business instead of a job. The business runs. The team delivers. The owner coaches, mentors, and shows up for the things that actually need him.
The rest of the time? He's got a cowboy hat and a clear calendar.
The Path Forward
I'll be honest about where I am today: still a work in progress. Still fighting the urge to control everything. Still learning to be a leader of people instead of the expert doing all the work. HBR — Making the Transition from Expert to Leader
I'm looking at 70-hour weeks for the next year or two. But on the backside of that? Probably 25 hours a week, with a business that actually runs.
The investment is real. The discipline is hard. And the instinct to just do it yourself never fully goes away.
But every hour you spend on a $10 task is an hour you're not spending on the $2,000 work. Every system you refuse to build is another year on the treadmill. Every hire you delay is another client walking out the door.
The tasks aren't going to stop demanding your attention.
The only question is whether you're going to keep paying $2,000 for $10 work.
Want to learn how to stop being the bottleneck in your own business? Follow LINX Consulting for more insights on building systems that free you to focus on what actually grows your business.
James Lincoln is the founder of LINX Consulting, where he helps business owners stop being the bottleneck in their own success. After rebuilding from the ground up, he now guides others through the systems, delegation, and mindset shifts that create companies capable of thriving—without their owners at the center of everything.