It's all too easy as an eager entrepreneur to bite off more than they can chew. This is particularly true for those who are boot-strapping. In the years I have worked with start-ups I have seen many fail because the owners have taken on to much themselves and failed to focus on the important things.
You work on business development, management and sales during regular working hours, squeeze in some networking in the evenings and then do the admin, book-keeping and accounts at the weekend. If this is a familiar story, you need to stop!
I know where you are coming from - doing all these things yourself makes your business more profitable, lowers overheads, gives you a better chance of success - right? Wrong.
Even if you are a workaholic, your time as the owner of a business should be spent wisely. Whether you work 25 or 75 hours a week - its crucial you use the time well. Capitalise on your strengths and delegate the things which aren't your key strengths, aren't mission critical or don't represent the best use of your time.
Analyse your work week. Jot down all the tasks you handle yourself. Then, start separating those tasks in to the ones which are essential for you to do and ones which you could get help. Once you have done this, honestly - you should see your list is much shorter than the other list. Now focus on the other list - which of those tasks could you easily hand over to someone else? Which do you dislike the most? Which are the most time consuming? You need to offload as much of this work as possible and focus on the things you do best. The things which will help your business grow at a sustainable pace.
You may be thinking, but I can't afford the overheads, or I work from a home office and can't hire someone. You can. The internet and outsourcing marketplaces like the one I run make it possible for hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs to be more successful day in day out.
While a book-keeper in the UK may cost £25-£35 per hour, you can outsource it to an experienced and highly skilled person in a developing country for much less, perhaps £5 or £6 per hour. A good PA in the UK would set you back in the region of £35k per year. Outsourcing it you could get an equally skilled and experienced candidate, with first rate English from the Philippines to work for £8k or less per year.
What's more - outsourcing means you don't pay for holiday time, sick leave, national insurance and other hidden costs. You pay the price you are quoted - and if you use my website - freelancer.co.uk [1] - then you only pay when you are 100% satisfied with the work that has been done. Oh - and you don't have to take someone on part-time or full-time - you can just dip in to the global labour pool as and when you need to get work done.
Need more reasons to try it? Sign up to Freelancer.co.uk [2] today and enter the promo code 'NEWBIZ' and you can post up to 3 trial projects for free.
Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer
www.freelancer.co.uk [3]