Do you feel like you are doing everything in your Business?

As business owners we often wear many hats.

Let’s say for example you own a plumbing business, in a typical scenario, we’ve got a husband and wife team who have hired a couple of contractors. 

The original idea might have been that the husband would go out and do the quoting, work onsite, supervise the contractors on the job, and help out with the admin in the office like answering phones and ordering stock. 

The wife might have decided her roles could be taking orders, answering the phones and emails, finalising the quotes and doing the bookkeeping. 

So many tasks to shuffle

But who does all the other tasks that need doing? like collecting the mail, going to the bank, creating the socials, keeping the socials updated, marketing, writing blogs, attracting new customers, hiring and firing staff, training staff or organizing trainees, organising the vehicles, and ensuring their upkeep, buy replacement tools, grow the business and deal with referral partners, insurances, compliance laws, taxes, superannuation and the list goes on.

There seems to be never enough time to do everything

Whatever business you are running I’m sure you can relate. There just never seems enough time in the day to get it all done and if you are making it through the day having made your customers happy, there often isn’t time to take on more work, grow your business and increase your profits.

At some point you are going to need help.

Steps you can take

Take a good look at yourself

And ask who am I?

I’m sure you’ve heard of a SWOT analysis where you assess your strengths and weaknesses.

But it’s more than that, what do you actually enjoy doing? If you are in business with your partner, get them to do this too.

Make a list 

Make a list of everything that you do and once you’ve done that ask yourself

What tasks or roles do I like doing? 

At first you may not know.

A good way to gain an understanding of this is to identify which tasks you do first, you probably enjoy these more. In general we put off the tasks we dislike and leave them until last.

Now that you have identified which tasks you like least.

Ask yourself, if I concentrated on the tasks I prefer would this be of benefit to my business.

If the answer is yes then you need to consider whether you can afford to get help.

Do you need to hire?

Talk to your accountant, any accountant worth their salt will be able to tell you if you are in a good enough financial position to hire extra help in the office. 

If you get the green light, get help as soon as possible

If by getting help you could for example, make customers happier by achieving a quicker email turnaround, jobs being completed quicker or taking time to nourish your referral network and grow your business then why wouldn’t you?

Now you have the opportunity to enjoy what you do and ditch the rest

But you are still reluctant to take someone on, why is that?

This is where you’ll need to take a further real good look at yourself and ask…

Why am I uncomfortable in handing some of these tasks to someone else?

Am I a control freak?

Sorry, but the question needs to be asked. 

You’ve probably been doing things on your own for so long or it’s just you and your partner who have been juggling everything that you’ve become used to being a stressed out under performer and haven’t allowed yourself to dream of a better way.

No one is irreplaceable

You’ll need to remind yourself of the very real truth that no one is irreplaceable in business, sad but true. 

You may worry that an employee won’t care about your business like you do, and look if you find that rare gem that does then lucky you, but the truth is no one cares about your business like you do. 

You may believe they can’t do the job as well as you, or do it the way you want it done.

Firstly you need to release yourself from the mental agony of perfectionism, it may be true that they might not do it as well as you, even with the perfect training and procedures in place, but you’ll need to weigh this up with the time that you are getting back by not doing these tasks. And besides they may do it better than you, and that’s a good thing right? Unless you have some ego issues which need looking at, but that’s a whole other blog…

You don’t have the time to train them

You’ve already made a list of what you do and what needs doing, before you hire, spend time documenting what you do. You can easily make training videos through a platform like Loom which is really user friendly 

Can’t hire?

Ok what if your accountant has advised that you can’t afford to hire anyone?

Have you thought about outsourcing? 

Onshore or offshore outsourcing can work fine and is a cost effective way to find help for a singular task using a platform like Fiverr or ongoing help through Upwork. I’ve tried both of these platforms and have been very happy with the results.

So either way, find someone that can help you with those smaller tasks that are taking up your time and release yourself from the burden.