With the limited budget of a new start up, its no surprise that most entrepreneurs try to do everything themselves. However, sometimes this is not the best idea, especially if the time being spent on tasks that someone else could do isn’t making money for the business.
While you may not be able to afford to hire staff, you should look into delegating a few time consuming tasks. For example, if you can afford to hire a cleaning service to come in to clean your office or shop twice a month so you can concentrate on making business calls instead, it may be worth the price the service charges. If you have no graphic design skills and aren’t great at writing sales copy, you may spend several hours trying to get that newspaper ad written properly, so it makes sense to ask the paper’s staff to design one for you instead, even if the paper charges a design fee.
Another great resource is as close as your local college or university. Business majors and marketing majors are always looking for hands on experience. In exchange for your mentorship, you should be able to find several students willing to work as interns.
Finally, you may want to consider using a virtual assistant to handle the chores an administrative assistant would do. Since VAs only charge for the time they actually spend completing a task, you can get a lot done even if you can only afford to pay for a few hours work each week. Ask your VA what he or she can do to help you lighten your load.
Originally posted on June 18, 2010 @ 7:50 am