Delegation Won’t Cost You The Earth: 3 Ways To Get Help When You Have No Budget

Where do you even start with delegation when you have no money to outsource the work? Here are three things you can do as a dance or theatre school owner that won’t cost the earth.

Why You Need Help At Some Point

The real way to grow your school is to get help, at some point, full stop. Even if you build up to 30 or 40 classes, that’s 30 or 40 hours of teaching a week, on top of all the admin behind it. For that to be sustainable, and for you to actually grow the school rather than just survive inside it, you need help.

But what if you’re genuinely not in a position to bring someone on? You can’t afford an admin person right now, and that’s just the truth of where your business is. Here’s what to do instead.

1. Automate With Free Tools

There are a number of free tools to use:

E-Marketing Software – Like Mailerlite, Mail chimp – It can automate your entire enrolment process.

In my programme Fundamental Foundations there is a section about Operations and that’s where I teach my three step acquisition, enrolment and onboarding sequence. It maps out exactly what your customer goes through, from that first enquiry all the way to “yes, I’m staying.” I break it down whatever stage you’re starting from, whether you’re still on pen and paper, on spreadsheets, on a CRM like MemberMeister or Class Manager, right through to full automation.

I say full automation with a small caveat. There will always be one or two little bits you need to click, press, or confirm yourself. But it’s a world away from someone new coming to a lesson and you having to think, did she come? Let me check the register. Right, she needs this email. It’s far quicker and far more automated than that.

I won’t pretend it can’t get a little complicated. If you’re not confident with tech, breathe. Even starting small, with templated emails inside your enrolment sequence that you can send with one click, makes a real difference.

The other thing to consider is that if you are using Membermeister, Class Manager, Class 4 Kids, DanceBiz or any other number of databases or CRM’s.  The question I always ask, is are you using it properly? You are already paying for it and many people just have not invested some time into using ALL it’s features.  Just a bit of time spent learning can save you SO much time in the long term. 

2. Give Ownership Through Permissions and Boundaries

This one probably isn’t what you expect, and it’s not another app.

It’s about permissions and boundaries. Think about what a teacher on your team could take ownership of, if you let them.

When I ran my school, my teachers always knew that if a new trial student wasn’t settling into a class, they had full permission to speak to the parent afterwards themselves. “Please come back next week, we’d love to give you another free week to help them settle in.” All they had to do was tell me afterwards, “so and so didn’t settle well, I gave them a free week.” I’d say fine, no problem.

Compare that to the alternative: the teacher comes to me, tells me the student struggled, I decide an email is needed, then I’m the one ringing or emailing the parent. Nip it in the bud the moment it happens instead, and it becomes ten times easier. That’s 10 to 15 minutes saved, easily, every single time.

So ask yourself what permissions and boundaries you could give. I use the word boundaries deliberately, because staff need clear parameters. As long as they work within those boundaries, they’re free to act. Anything outside them, they check with you first.

The same applies to assistant teachers, senior pupils helping in younger classes, toilet trips, handovers, making sure no child runs out when they shouldn’t, handing out stickers. It’s all about giving people ownership of a specific, defined piece of the puzzle, rather than everything landing back on you.

3. Bring In Volunteers For Project Work

This works particularly well for project based tasks.

I have a volunteer who makes props for every show I put on. She’s my go to. She loves it, she’s brilliantly crafty, and here’s how it works. I sit down with her, tell her what we need, and give her a budget. That’s the crucial part, the budget.

Say it’s £100. I ask if that’s doable, she says absolutely, and I cover the cost of all the resources so she never has to pay for paint or materials herself. She just makes the props, which is what she loves doing. She’s not paid staff, but by giving her clear permissions and boundaries, she can take full ownership of that piece.

If she starts creeping up towards the £100 limit, she’ll come to me and say she needs another £20, and I decide yes or no on the spot. She always knows exactly where she stands, and so do I.

It’s about finding people in your world, not necessarily paid staff, who you can hand a clearly bounded piece of ownership to. That’s delegation that genuinely won’t cost you the earth.

If you want to get more help with Staff, this is one of my favourite areas.  I have a programme called Evolve, you can check it out HERE.