Don’t sweat the small stuff

If like me, you are a one-man band or small business, then it’s an ongoing juggling act to deliver the business, find new business and do all the admin to keep the business running.  How do we achieve this?  Well you might be super organised and get all that done within reasonable working hours or more likely, you squeeze in the admin in evenings or weekends, or when you absolutely have to get it done (how many people “don’t have time” to do their invoicing then wonder why they have cash flow issues!).

Even if you are super organised, is it best use of your time to be doing all your own admin?  After all wouldn’t you be better placed using your time to focus on delivering your work and finding new work?  Michael Gerber makes this very point in his book, The E-myth, which explain why it’s crucial for people who run their own business to have processes in place so that they can outsource those tasks that they don’t have the skills, time (or inclination) to do.

I finally figured this out for myself last year and decided to look for some business admin assistance.  After a few conversations with some virtual assistants, I enlisted the services of manfriday. James from manfriday, manages my diary (booking, confirming, rescheduling meetings), books my train tickets, types up my client notes and generally gets me more organised.  After 6 months support I feel that there are 2 key benefits from outsourcing this work:

1. I delegate the things I really don’t enjoy doing
2. It frees me up to work on developing my business and potentially taking on more clients (at a much higher value than the cost of the admin)

The great thing about this is that you can spend as little as £50 a month up to £1,000 a month – depending on the level of support needed and your budget.

I don’t want this post to sound like an ad for manfriday or the use of virtual assistants, it’s just that after I started using one, it was a no brainer and I wondered why it had taken me so long to start!  Also for those one-man bands or small businesses who aspire to grow, this is a vital step – otherwise you easily can get stuck in the cycle of having too much to do but not having enough fee earning time to grow the business.

So instead of sweating the small stuff and working long hours (have a read of my whitepaper on winning back time) doing tedious tasks you don’t enjoy doing, why not break the cycle and find the support from elsewhere.