When I started my own business almost 30 years ago I was psyched about the opportunity to spend my time doing all of the things that I loved to do. I would train, consult and become a trusted advisor to my clients. I saw myself adding value and becoming instrumental in my clients’ business growth, saving them from years of flat sales and diminished profits.
What I didn’t take into account was that along with the things that I loved to do I was now tasked with responsibilities that I disliked and at which I wasn’t very good.
Things like bookkeeping, record keeping, and various administrative duties were now included in the list of things that fell to me, and as a recent escapee from the corporate world and now the owner of a fledgling business, I had little experience doing these things. I also had very little money to hire staff and because this was 30 years ago, I didn’t have access to services like Thumbtack and Upwork, nor were there “virtual assistants” for hire.
I recruited my Mom to do my bookkeeping and even though she was a trained and professional bookkeeper she had trouble making sense of my less than stellar record keeping. She forged ahead with the bookkeeping and I continued to do what I did best and ignored many of those tasks and responsibilities that hence remained undone.
Until the day when my mom fired me. That’s right, she fired me.
She had gone along for a few years and finally had it with the mess that I referred to as “my books” and so she fired me as a client. Faced with piles of receipts and an unbalanced checkbook, I realized that I needed to get help.
All of us have things in our business that we hate to do – prospect for new clients, attend to administrative tasks, bookkeeping, content development, marketing – the list goes on and on but the good news is that there is a solution for entrepreneurs everywhere…we don’t HAVE to do it all!
We have options! Once you realize that certain parts of your business aren’t working as well as they should or are being ignored altogether it is time to find resources to pick up the slack. Depending upon your circumstances you can bring in full or part-time staff, work with either a virtual assistant or find professional freelancers that offer their services through various online providers.
The key is to take action fast before too much time elapses and you find that you have wasted time attending to things that other resources could have done better.
As for me, I know that I wasted time and also experienced much stress when I fumbled around working on things that were neither mission critical nor fueled my entrepreneurial passion. Now I do the things that get my juices flowing and excite me and make me remember why I went into business for myself in the first place.
All I can say is that I should have done it sooner!
