He was spending three days on a single video, and writing tired him more than anything. So he decided to delegate it.
He found a writer, explained the subject, and received the text three days later. It was a good text by writing standards: ordered, correct, clear. And it did not contain one sentence he could say to camera.
He sat down and rewrote all of it. So he paid money, lost three days, and ended up with his own work.
The irony is that every week he was spending five hours organising files, uploading videos, writing descriptions and fixing subtitles, all things any trained person can do without needing his voice.
The rule: delegate what repeats, not what distinguishes you
That sentence settles the whole subject. And the reason is not that writing is sacred, but that tasks fall into two kinds:
Tasks holding your judgement and your voice: the idea, the hook, the opinion, the decision to cut, and the relationship with your audience. Delegate these and you lose what makes your channel yours, and you will redo the work yourself, so you pay twice.
Tasks of repeated execution: organising, uploading, subtitling, a first assembly, administrative follow-up. These transfer with a written recipe, and their quality does not depend on anybody's taste.
Always start from the second, even if the first tires you more. Tiredness is not the criterion for delegation; transferability is.
A week-long exercise that identifies your first task
Do not guess. Do this for one week:
Carry a sheet and write down every task you do in your work with the time it took. No detail, one line per task.
And at the end of the week, sort each line into two columns: does it repeat on every video, and does it need my judgement?
The task that repeats, does not need your judgement, and takes the longest, is the first thing to delegate. And you will usually be surprised: the task you find is not the one you thought.
And calculating the real time per video, and what disappears from it without anybody counting, is the subject of what does one video actually cost you.
Five tasks ordered by ease of delegation
1. File organisation and backups. The easiest and the least risky, and it needs only a written recipe.
2. Subtitles and on-screen text. Entirely repetitive, and the result can be checked in minutes.
3. Uploading, descriptions and tags. Transfers with a checklist, and saves you time at the heaviest moment: publishing night.
4. The first assembly in the edit. Somebody orders the material for you and cuts the silence and the repeats, then you take it and build. The biggest time saving on the list, and it needs an organised handover, whose method is in how do you hand a project to an editor without endless revision rounds.
5. Thumbnails, once your format is fixed. Delegate when you have a template, not before.
And what stays with you: the idea, the script, appearing on camera, the decision to publish, and replying to your audience.
Before you bring anybody in: write the method
This is the step that makes delegation work or fail. One page per task holding:
- What the task is, in a line.
- The steps in order.
- What they receive and what they deliver, in which format and under what filename.
- Three examples of an acceptable result from your past work.
- Three things that are forbidden.
And do not write that page from your head. Write it while performing the task yourself once, and you will discover steps you did not know you were doing.
A second benefit of that page: if the person leaves your work after two months, the recipe stays with you.
How to find the person
Three sources, ordered by quality of result:
1. From your audience. The best. Somebody who watches your channel knows your tone before you explain it. Post in the community tab that you have a specific task and are looking for somebody.
2. A referral from another creator you know. A referral saves you most of the trial stage.
3. Local filmmaker and editor groups. Here you need a more careful trial, because the samples on display may not be their own work.
And what does not work: hiring a friend because they are a friend. The personal relationship makes correction hard, and work that is not corrected decays.
The trial: one small paid task
Do not give anybody a whole video the first time, and do not ask for free work.
Give them a small real task from your work, and pay them for it. And look at four things more than the result itself:
- Did they ask questions before starting? Somebody who asks understands; somebody who does not guesses.
- Did they deliver on time? The deadline on a first task indicates every deadline after it.
- Did they read the recipe? That shows in the small details.
- How did they take your notes? Give one note and watch: did they act on it, or explain to you why their work was right?
And try two people on the same task if you can. The comparison teaches you more about the task itself than about the two people.
The agreement in five lines
You do not need a contract on a first task, but do not start with nothing written:
The task: [a one-line description]
Delivery: [the format] on [the date]
Payment: [the amount], [the method] and [when]
Revision rounds: [number]
Who owns the work: [you]
Five lines in one message. And the last line matters if the work is design or editing.
The first month: how to review without becoming the bottleneck
What most ruins delegation at its start is the channel owner reviewing everything and adjusting everything, so the work becomes heavier than it was.
Three rules protect you:
Review once, not three times. One written round of notes, not scattered comments throughout the day.
Correct the recipe, not the piece. If the mistake repeats twice, the fault is in the method page rather than the person. Add a line to it.
Accept eighty per cent in the first month. Somebody who reaches your standard on a first task does not exist; somebody who improves every week does.
And when you have several tasks and several people, arranging all of it is the subject of organising a small team around one channel.
When delegating is a mistake
- If you have no steady rhythm. Somebody publishing irregularly does not need a person, they need a system.
- If the task takes you twenty minutes a week. Explaining it costs more than doing it.
- If you do not know how to do it yourself. Do not delegate a task whose result you cannot judge.
- If your income cannot carry it. Which is the next section.
Cost: how do you know you are ready
A practical calculation with no fixed figures: take the hours you will save in a month, and ask yourself one question: will I use those hours on something that returns more than the amount I will pay?
If the answer is that you will make an extra video, or finish paid work, or sleep, the decision is sound. If the answer is that you will use the hours refreshing the analytics page, postpone it.
Start from one task
Do not build a team. Pick one repetitive task, write it a page, and try one person with a small paid job. If it works, add a second task after a month rather than after a week.
And most people who ended up with a small team that works well started exactly like that: with one task that did not touch their voice, and one written page.