Don’t micro manage staff, Use your staff. You shouldn’t think that you have to be there to monitor every move they make. You should trust these people; you wouldn’t hire anyone you didn’t trust, would you? Your staff, no matter what age they are, should be able to perform the role that you have hired them to do and you need to trust them to do that. If you micro manage your staff, given time they will leave you. Support them and allow them the responsibility to do their own work.

Speaking of staff, you should always delegate your own responsibilities where you can. This will free up your time to work on more important tasks like running your business.  Don’t think that you can’t delegate to your staff because they are assets that cost me $X dollars an hour, your time is worth all their wages combined and the more time you have to work on your startup the more productive your business will be. Delegation is not simply asking one of your staff to do one menial task so you don’t have to. Delegation is more training a capable staff member to perform a responsibility you do in your daily work to free your time up. Delegation can be hard at first, it can be like giving up your first child but you need to:

• instruct your staff on the task
• train them to perform the task
• monitor them to ensure it is being done correctly,
• and then release them to perform the new duty
Examples of tasks you could delegate would be stock control or invoicing.

Set hours around when you are available to your customers, suppliers & staff. Everyone knows that if you are to be successful in business you may well find that you are working more than 8 hours a day. You need to set limits on when people can contact you for business. You can’t always be there to answer everyone’s questions and hold everyone’s hand and at times you will need the downtime.
One thing to remember is that if you are constantly hand-feeding your people they will never learn to think for themselves and the will always rely on you for answers. Make it well known that you are available during certain hours only. Remember that you can’t always be everything to everyone all the time. This isn’t easy but you do need to let go, just surrender and say to yourself that if they still need you, it will all be there tomorrow.