The following blog relates to how I was feeling in my business and then I decided to do something about it. 

I started with a dream of creating my own virtual bookkeeping company that specialised in providing top quality service and advice, while making the latest AI technology available to small/medium business. As my company grew and I became a business consultant, I started to get stressed and depressed.

I couldn’t keep up with the workload and began to miss important deadlines; then my business mentor advised me to plan and become a business owner and not just an employee in my own business. I actually became worse than an employee, I was a slave to my own business, then started to hate it.

Even though I had a local team of contractors to help with work, there was still an overarching problem – lack of highly professional team members to deal with the increasing workload.

Planning for the future and engaging a professional and highly regarded outsourcing company was the answer to my problems. At last I’ve began to experience freedom and happiness in running a successful business. Woohoo! What a relief.

Cheers: Steven Mulligan (CEO & Director – no longer slave employee)

When you start a small business, it’s usually only you behind the whole operation. You wear many hats, from CEO to clean-up crew. As you pour your heart and soul into your business and it begins to grow, the amount of work involved grows with it.

Because a small business is so focused on survival, you pay a lot of attention to the bottom line. This makes a lot of sense, but it also leads to being seriously overworked.

There will inevitably come a time when you have to consider letting go of some control and paying others to take some things off your plate. Here are five signs that it’s time for you to start outsourcing tasks:

You’re overwhelmed and stressed

This one’s a dead giveaway. If you find that there isn’t enough time in the day, you’re losing sleep, free time is a thing of the past, and you’re not your usual self — you’ve reached burnout. This is not a sustainable place to be, and you would be wise to start offloading some activities ASAP.

You’re spending time doing things you hate

Nobody goes into business hoping to spend their days completing tasks they despise. It starts with a dream, or an idea for how to make things better. Or even an idea for how to make more money. Whatever the reasons you had for starting your business, they likely did not include doing chores that are tedious or that you don’t enjoy.

When you decide to outsource, start with functions that are eating up your time in an unenjoyable way. Once you let these go, you’ll find your purpose renewed because you can focus on what you loved about your business to begin with.

Quality of work has gone down

When you’re working hard and trying to manage all aspects of your business, it can be easy to miss this sign that you’re not juggling it all as well as you thought. Many times, the first signs come from a client complaint–often along the lines of delivering a lower-quality product or missing something in your services.

When the quality of your work declines, it’s definitely time to hire some help. If you’re not satisfying your customers, your business will begin to suffer – and then you won’t need the extra help after all, because there won’t be a business to run.

No time to grow

If you want your business to grow, you need time to plan for it. If you’re just getting by and not able to plan your next steps, you need to outsource some tasks. When you find that you’re barely holding it together to get everything done and there’s not time for anything else, get help. No business gets to the next level by completing the bare minimum.

No personal time

When your work life is taking over your personal life, it’s time to enlist some help. It isn’t sustainable to work so hard that you have no time for family, friends, or enjoyable pursuits.

You might be saving a bit of money, but you will also exacerbate your stress and miss out on the enjoyable parts of life. Did you get into business so you could work 16 hours a day seven days a week? Probably not, but you may find yourself doing that for weeks and even months at a time.

If that’s the case, you’re going to burn out. It’s time to get some help.

Final thoughts

It’s a difficult mindset shift for an entrepreneur who has spent all their time so far trying to save and earn as much as possible. But needing to outsource your tasks is actually a sign of success. When you take the leap and hire someone to share the burden, you will be pleasantly surprised by the many ways that it pays off.