It's the mournful cry of a business owner with five employees or fewer.
I've said it so many times, I'm tired of hearing myself: it's not usually no time, nor is it no money. It's overwhelmingly no priority.
In other words people don't realize the benefits of seeking help. All they look at is the hourly rate or the weekly cost.
The fact is being able to delegate just a few hours per week of grunt work frees you up to do many things you haven't had time to do:
- overdue quotes
- delayed appointments
- sales follow-up
- client/customer check-ins
- networking at organizations where you've already paid dues
- weekly schmoozing schedules
- creation and distribution of an external newsletter
- updated website
The list goes on and on.
Funny, isn't it, that every one of these activities that isn't getting done is marketing? Your marketing isn't even on your radar screen, because you're so tied down with the administrative details!
Last week a client, who followed my advice to bring in someone to help her five hours a week with event preparation gave me the most marvelous news: "These five hours a week aren't even costing more, because the two of us are more organized; everything is running more smoothly and getting finished more quickly, including clean-up." Wow! Music to my ears.
What are some simple tasks you can delegate, perhaps even to existing staff?
This idea of having to do everything yourself, because you're such a perfectionist and no one can do it as well as you can, is costing you business, big time. Your mindset is preventing your company from growing.
Every so often I run into owners who say they don't want to grow, that they like things just as they are. They love their clients, and everything's rosy. Great. What if one of those clients sells the business to a new owner who craves change of vendors? How about illness or even death? Or relocation of a client who can work only with local professionals?
Change is the most threatening thing to a human being; but change occurs daily, whether we like it or not.
And it's that change that requires us to keep marketing. Our marketing doesn't have to be expensive or overly time-consuming. It just has to be consistent. Three disciplined hours per week devoted to marketing (one hour every other day or some variation thereof) is not excessive, but it can bring dramatic results.
You deserve to get a good night's sleep. You also deserve to leave your business at the end of the day, feeling good about all that you accomplished.
You know the money's there to get some minimal part-time help. Now all you need is to tweak your mindset.
