75: How to Delegate at Work and Home with Tanya Eklund

For a recovering perfectionist, it can be tricky learning how to delegate. Your brain tells you that no one can get the job done like you can. And it seems easier to just do it yourself.

Pro tip: This isn’t true! Delegating to others on your team frees up your time so that you can focus on what truly matters to you.

Today on The Bold Life, I’m joined by Tanya Eklund to talk about how to get comfortable delegating to your team. Tanya is one of Calgary’s top performing real estate agents and head of The Tanya Eklund Group.

Since 2015, Tanya has over 424 million in sales volume and in 2020 Tanya was the #1 ranked luxury real estate agent in Calgary.

When she’s not killing it at work, Tanya is the proud champion of several philanthropic causes including Woods Homes and the SSUVI foundation, allowing her to give back to the community she loves.

More about Tanya’s story

“I’m an accidental entrepreneur” Tanya explains.

When she was 18, she was studying linguistics and anthropology at the University of Alberta thinking she was going to pursue law.

After three years straight of attending school (including summer school), Tanya found herself burnt out and exhausted. She saw an opportunity in real estate and within three weeks she dropped out of school, moved to Calgary, and began to pursue realty.

Building a Team and Letting Go of Control

“When you first start out in real estate, you’re a lone bird”, Tanya explains. You learn the business from the inside out to really understand how to succeed. Everything from marketing, administration, selling, and everything in between.

For the first five years, Tanya did everything behind the scenes of getting houses sold.

After understanding real estate 101, Tanya felt it was time to move away from the administrative side and move towards selling.

This didn’t come without mistakes! When she first started out, Tanya would hire buyers’ agents, but she kept losing them because she didn’t have enough business. What she realized was that what she really needed was to hire an admin assistant.

By delegating and giving up control of admin tasks, Tanya was able to free up her time to really focus on making connections and selling houses. It was a daunting steppingstone having to be responsible for someone’s salary – Tanya asked herself “can I really afford this?” – but she realized she couldn’t afford not to do it.

Over the last 21 years, Tanya has added seven team members to support the growth of her business and it has flourished into the top-ranking team it is today. By delegating the work, Tanya has been able to completely focus on what’s she good at – selling houses.

How to Find Your Strengths (And How to Know When to Let Someone Else Do It)

Before kids, Tanya and her husband Chad had packed schedules. She was an up-and-coming realtor and Chad was working and completing his executive MBA. They were the perfect pair of workaholics.

When Chad finished his MBA and Tanya was still staying up until 1am (now alone) doing paperwork she realized there must be a better way to get all her work done. She would obviously rather be spending time with her husband.

It was in that moment – at 1am – when Tanya realized it was time to delegate.

“The biggest piece of advice I can give is having a strong team, trusting them, and delegating” – Tanya.

Here’s how to know what tasks you should be delegating:

It doesn’t serve you
It isn’t making you the money that you could be making somewhere else
Without doing it, you’ll free up your time

When you’re a business owner, a mom, and an adult, it takes a lot of effort to keep your life in order and still have time for yourself. This is why you need the proper supports in place.

If you’re just starting out with your small business, it can seem pretty daunting to be hiring employees right off the bat. Tanya suggests virtual help – for an hourly rate, you can delegate tasks to a virtual assistant so that you can get back to business.

How do you make it less scary to delegate tasks to others? Time management and having a schedule, Tanya says. She plans every hour of her day in an old school day timer. By learning time management, you can see where, when, and what you can start to delegate in your life and work.

The most important thing in your day timer: Time for yourself. Things like:

Talking a walk
Going to the gym
Meditating
Going for coffee with a friend
Whatever you need to do to decompress

When growing a business, taking care of yourself can sometimes get pushed to the bottom of your to-do list. It’s important to remember that without you, there is no business, so taking the time to put yourself first is a must.

Also remember this. When you’re starting out as a solopreneur, you can feel like you’re working totally in isolation. Other people don’t really get it. Friends and family are doing other things. And you can feel totally out of the loop (or even like you’re on the wrong path). Finding an accountability partner is a great strategy to keep you on track, brainstorm ideas, and have the support and reassurance that you got this.

Making Yourself The #1 Priority and Having Perseverance

When a plane is crashing, the rule of thumb is put your own oxygen mask on first before you help others.

It’s the same thing with caring for yourself. You can’t help anyone if you’re forgetting to help yourself.

In Tanya’s experience, this includes looking good to feel good to be good. When she feels 100%, she can show up 100% for the people around her in life and at work.

For women, there’s a natural tendency to put everyone else before ourselves. But it’s important to remember that you deserve a spot on the totem pole too! Making sure that you keep up the habits and routines that make you feel your best will pay off not only for you, but for your family and your business.

In Tanya’s business, major challenges are just a part of the environment she works in. She explains that these challenges have been defining moments in her business, despite the sleepless nights they caused.

How does she persevere and overcome these earth-shaking moments? “I surround myself with amazing people that elevate me”, Tanya says. She reaches out to people she trusts for support and perspective. She leaned on her

Team
Coach, and an
Emotional intelligence guru

Having people in her life that she can use as sounding boards is one of the biggest supports that Tanya needs for her business to thrive.

Things happen in life to all of us that throw us off track, but we can’t curl up in a ball and close our eyes until it works itself out. We have to manage it and deal with it. The key is finding people who have the tools to help you deal with it.

Tanya’s Book Recommendation

1. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

This is the one that changed Tanya’s life. She was reading it at an airport in Africa in 2004 when a tall African man and sat beside her and told her “That is the best book you will ever read”. To make a long story short, that tall African man and his family are still friends with Tanya to this day and they chat on a weekly basis. The book itself, The Purpose Drive Life, provides a perspective on life that is unlike no other.

2. Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is the one that Tanya binged and read the whole thing in four days. It’s about a man who goes to Russia, lives life on the edge, and the rest is a psychological thriller. It’s based on a true story and it’s actually getting made into a movie!

Wanna Learn More?

Because of Tanya’s success in real estate, she’s very easy to find on google. You can learn more about her real estate business at www.tanyaeklundgroup.ca and find her on Instagram @tanyaeklund.

Show Highlights

[02:17] How Tanya became interested in real estate.

[04:07] Starting her journey of entrepreneurship and building a team.

[05:10] The team-building process in real estate.

[10:00] The moment Tanya realized she needed to hire someone.

[13:35] How to figure out which tasks to delegate to others.

[16:42] The importance of learning time management.

[21:37] Why you need to live for yourself.

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