Best of CCP: What to do when there’s no one to delegate to

STRONGER TOGETHER: On September 18th, AVA Collective is hosting a small business panel and networking event all about building business resilience. It’s been a chaotic year to be a business owner, so let’s gather and learn from one another about how to keep moving forward no matter what gets thrown at us.

Join me and the other panelists at Hartman’s Distilling Co. for an in-depth discussion where we’ll share our stories, strategies, and specific ways we’ve built business resilience. Ask us anything during the audience Q&A, grab a new headshot, and enjoy some refreshments too!

Grab your tickets here!

In the August 2025 edition:

• Best of CCP: What to do when there’s no one to delegate to

• My go-to resource for business banking, credit card, and other financial recommendations 💳

• A reminder that creativity can be difficult, and why we shouldn’t let that stop us 🎶

SOMETHING USEFUL

CCP subscribers have nearly doubled since I first shared this article in July 2024, so I’m re-sharing it this month. Enjoy!

What to do when there’s no one to delegate to

Solo business owners have no time to waste. Whether you’re solo by choice or by necessity, the way a one-person business operates is different than the way a business with several employees does.

When your success is dependent on your limited time and attention, you need to be sure you’re using them effectively. There’s very little space for shiny objects or rabbit holes that lead to nowhere. If this is your situation and it’s stressing you out, read on for tips on how to make solo ownership work better for you.

Double down on the fundamentals

The good news? It’s 100% possible to run a fabulously successful business by focusing most of your time on a small set of core fundamentals: Finances, strategy, visibility, and customer service. Every single business, no matter the size or industry, must excel in these four areas to succeed.

Let’s break them down a bit:

Finances. For a business to be sustainable, it must be profitable. Not in a greedy, exploitative way (we’ll leave that to the Metas and Amazons of the world) but if a business isn’t earning more than it’s spending, it won’t be around for long.

Solid financial management makes everything else easier, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. This should be a top priority, even (especially!) if you feel like it’s not your strong suit. Help is available if you need it.

Strategy. Having a strategy means you know two things: what you want to accomplish, and how you’re going to accomplish it. That’s it. Simple, but not easy.

Running a business without setting a strategy makes everything slower and more difficult. If owning a business feels SO HARD to you some days, a lack of clear, comprehensive strategy may be the reason.

Visibility. Do the people who want to buy from you know that you exist? If they find you, are you presenting yourself and your business in a way that gives them the confidence to spend their money with you? Are you focusing your marketing to reach these people, or are you just talking to whoever’s out there on Instagram or TikTok?

Customer service. A sustainable business doesn’t just attract customers, it retains them. When a customer interacts with you and your product or service, they should come away with a sense that you are competent, professional, and trustworthy.

Great customer service is built on a foundation of clear communication, consistent internal processes, and excellent delivery of whatever it is that you do.

Are you spending most of your working time on all four of these fundamental areas? If you’re focused on other things and feeling spread thin, or ignoring one of these areas because it’s out of your comfort zone, it’s time to reassess your priorities.

Be effective, not productive

There’s no shortage of productivity advice, but I suggest moving away from trying to be productive and moving toward trying to be effective.

Being productive means you’re getting things done, sure. But being effective means you’re getting the RIGHT things done. It requires a deeper knowledge of what your goals are and how to use your time to get closer to those goals. You’re shifting your focus from doing more work, to getting more results. A huge difference!

Maximizing productivity will leave you exhausted. Focusing on effectiveness will empower you to drop unnecessary tasks and only spend time on what really matters.

So…what really matters? Start with the four fundamentals we’ve already discussed.

For you and your business—what do you need to do to improve your financial management skills and create a clear strategy? For your prospects and customers—what do you need to do to become visible to them, and provide a high level of service to them?

Shifting from productivity to effectiveness can be uncomfortable because it feels like doing less in a society that pushes us to do more. But solo business owners don’t have the bandwidth to think like that (and it’s not true anyway.)

When you let go of unnecessary tasks, you’re not dropping the ball—you’re being smart enough to know which balls are made of glass, which are made of rubber, and which are just crumpled-up pieces of paper that need to be thrown into the bin.

Wondering how to figure out which of the millions of things on your plate are truly important? Try using a tool called the Eisenhower Matrix:

Look at all your tasks and decide which are urgent (AKA time-sensitive), not urgent, important, and not important. Anything that is neither urgent or important gets dropped—bye bye! Anything both urgent and important should be a top priority.

If it’s important, but not urgent? Make a plan to work on it over time (this is exactly what my strategic planning service does.)

Urgent, but not important?* Create a daily or weekly time block on your calendar to deal with these tasks. There shouldn’t be a ton of them, and over time you may find they’re not necessary at all. Sometimes urgency is only in our own heads.

*This is a modified version of the matrix—the original advises delegating the urgent but not important items. But we don’t have that option, so I’ve swapped in my advice for how to handle these tasks.

Preserve your time and attention

The world will waste all of your time if you let it.

The attention economy is a major force, enticing us to watch and read and scroll for hours every day while tech and media companies monetize our time. And we participate in it too, creating and posting content even when the return on that time investment is hard to track.

But our time and attention spans are limited, so we need to make a conscious effort to use them well. I often suggest a simple time audit exercise to my solo owner clients, so they can see where their time goes and decide if they want to make changes.

Try it for yourself and let me know how it goes:

Time audit exercise:

1. Grab a physical notebook—it’s less susceptible to distraction than a digital notes app—and put today’s date at the top of the page.

2. List each hour you plan to work on the left side, leaving a few lines in between for your notes (e.g., 9am, 10am, 11am, etc.)

3. When you begin to do a task, write it down next to the current hour. If you switch to something different, even just picking up your phone to look at Instagram, write it down.

4. A sample hour could look like this: Emails, Instagram scrolling, bookkeeping, Instagram scrolling, newsletter writing, emails, Instagram scrolling. Now you can ask yourself if you want to be spending that much time on Instagram—and if not, how can you stop? (I use Android’s Focus Mode, or Focus if you have an iPhone.)

5. Do this for 3-5 days, until you feel like you have insight into how you’re spending your time. Create a list of the changes you want to make, and why those changes would help you (don’t skip this part—knowing why you want to make a change will motivate you more.)

Don’t try to overhaul your daily schedule all at once. Instead, find a few opportunities to make changes over time. A little less time scrolling, or starting your work day 15 minutes earlier, or taking a 10 minute walk after lunch—these simple tweaks add up over time and build momentum towards using your time effectively and intentionally.

Solo business ownership isn’t easy (huge understatement 😅) but there are steps we can take to make it sustainable. Focusing on the fundamentals, aiming for effectiveness instead of productivity, and protecting your time and attention will allow you to build a sustainable, successful business—all on your own.

SOMETHING NEAT

I’ve been getting a bunch of questions lately about business checking/savings accounts and credit cards. There are tons of options out there and it’s easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis.

To get past that, I usually recommend checking out NerdWallet—they have up-to-date, in depth reviews of business checking and savings accounts, business credit cards, and plenty of of small business finance articles on all sorts of topics. They can even help you do a side-by-side comparison of all the top business bookkeeping apps. (Exciting? Nope. Useful? For sure.)

If you’ve been meaning to get some of these financial fundamentals in place, check out NerdWallet to get the info you need to get unstuck.

[Not sponsored or anything, I just like NerdWallet!]

A LITTLE TREAT

The creative process, whether you’re making a song or building a business, involves a lot of time when you’re not really sure where it’s all going or what comes next. That can feel terrifying, and I find a lot of comfort in reminding myself that it’s a normal and expected part of the experience.

A fantastic way to get this reminder is by listening to creative people discuss their processes and challenges. If you love music, check out the Song Exploder podcast—described by host Hrishikesh Hirway as “Where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.”

Here’s one for my fellow Buffalonians:

Also: Jon Batiste on the creation of “We Are”
And: Sasami on the collaborative effort behind “In Love With A Memory”

WORK WITH ME

This newsletter is for everyone, but a one-on-one consulting engagement is tailored to you and your business. Here’s how I can support you:

• Strategic Action Planning—For solo business owners with a lot to do, and never enough time. We’ll refine, prioritize, and organize your goals, and I’ll create a road map for you to get them done. (My most popular service.)

• Resilience Jumpstart—Turn analysis paralysis into decisive action with affordable 1:1 support to get you moving in the right direction fast.

• Operations Analysis—Is your business built on a strong, long-lasting foundation? An operational deep dive will reveal opportunities for improvement, and tell you exactly what to do to make your business more resilient.

• General Consulting—Get expert support with business challenges like workload sustainability, financial fundamentals, pricing, client communication, and more.

When you’re ready, schedule a free 30 minute intro call with me.

Thanks for reading—see you next month. If you have a business owner friend who would find this newsletter useful, please share it with them!