Burnt out with the business

B

BernieM

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Set up my own business a few years ago, it's been going fine, not making a fortune but not loosing any money either. But feel really burnt out lately. I have one person working for me but I do everything from cleaning the office, developing business, sales, marketing, accounts and also work on a daily basis as an employee. Because I am working as an employee (this is what brings in the money!) I feel that I don't have enough time to meet my Clients, get the name out there etc etc. I'm too busy carrying out the day to day duties (which I know is also important).

I know the ideal option is to employ another person to take over my day to day duties and give me the chance to manage the business and develop it further. Firstly it's hard to find someone with experience in our industry and secondly will I have the money to take on a new person??

I really don't know what to do but know that I cannot continue working 15 hrs + per day !

Maybe someone here has been in the same situation and can offer me some advice?
 
Its difficult to comment meaningfully without knowing what type of work you do but the following ideas might work.
1. Employ a cleaner to come in 1-2 hours per week to clean your office.
2. Make contact with people running similar businesses as your own, maybe not your direct competitors, and possibly in a different geographical area, and possibly set up a network group so that you can share experiences and knowledge on common problems & opportunities.
3. Outsource your accounts & VAT work to your accountant and/or a bookkeeper.
4. Buy a hands free phone kit for your car and make as many business calls as you can when commuting and when doing business travel. Use this to minimise phone time in the office. Send calls to voicemail and return them while you are driving.
5. Use time management techniques to maximise the benefit of your work time.
6. If you are recruiting a new employee, you can always make them redundant later on if work dries up or you can't afford to keep them.
7. Increase your prices by, say 20%. Even if you lose 20% of your customers, you will still be earning the same money and working 20% less.
8. Take a holiday now, or as soon as possible.
9. Take some sort of a break every 6 or 7 weeks, eg 1 or 2 days off at minimum.
 
My bookkeeper charges me €17 per hour. Could a bookkeeper do your books in a couple of hours a week? Not only is this great value, it is also great peace of mind. My bookkeeper is fantastic and does a better job than I ever could.
 
I agree with Vanilla. Lets say a cleaner does five hours a week for €50. Thats five extra hours the OP has to do some more productive work like generate sales leads etc. Same with the bookkeeper, it give the OP more time to do the more important tasks that come with a new business.

Businesses tend to outsource things that do not make them money because they take up a lot of time.
 
The bill of €4k seems very large.

I have a small practice that only deals with sole traders and small owner run companies. We have set up our business on the basis of taking away all the work from the business owner and giving them back the information they need to run their business. Envelope full of receipts once a month type thing.

My clients have two choices, use us just for bookkeeping and payroll or use us for the above plus tax returns etc.

There is a little corner of the accountancy profession like myself who hate auditing and have no interest in dealing with big companies with their egomaniac boards and internal politics and we are happy to work with small business owners. We charge a flat monthly fee for the service so there is no €4k bills heading down the road at the end of the year and there is also no clock running up a bill every time you call with a question.

You should be able to get someone to do your monthly bookkeeping for around €50 and payroll for about €5 per employee for a staff of 1 to 5 for each payroll run with a charge of between €100 and €250 to do your P35's P60's etc.

BernieM,
you need to work out what you are getting paid per hour or at least how much you could be making per hour if you worked only on the business.
Once you have this then you need pay someone to do any job that costs less than your rate.

In a perfect world if you were free to do the work you are good at and could do it for 40 hours a week you would maximise your income and committment to the business. If you were to earn €50 per hour that you worked then if the cleaner will work for €12 per hour, hire the cleaner. The same with accountants, delivery men even administrative staff.

I know this is a perfect world situation and it is hard to outsource every job in the business, your business, but if you can make a start you can move away from the jobs that are getting you down and back doing the work that got you started in business and which is probably still your passion and driving force your situation will improve.

To draw on the old saying

you can do all of the jobs for some of the time, or you can do some of the jobs for all of the time but you can't do all of the jobs all of the time; because you will burn out.
 
Hi Bernie

Whatever about the bookkeeping, you need to get a qualified accountant to review your business for you. I agree with most of Ubi's excellent suggetions but you do need an independent person to review how appropriate they are to your particular business.

If you can't afford a qualified accountant, maybe a friend who is successful in business can do it for you. Someone who can read a set of accounts and who understands marketing and sales. I am not sure if Enterprise Ireland provides the service.

Ubi's idea of getting someone in a similar business to review things with you is worth pursuing.

The business environment generally is still very strong in Ireland. I would be worried that any business which is not making money, will find the going very tough whenever we have a dip.
 
Good advice from Ubiquitous and Command.
Outsource tasks that are not core and don't add value.
The hard part is finding an accountant that you like and understands your business.

Do take holidays (I need to take my own advice, no holidays for me since Christmas!) and try not to think about work when you are not in work. Even if it means that you spend less time at home try not to bring work home, it's important that you can get away from it both physically and mentally.

You are going through the most difficult phase in any business; it's growing and you are busy but not yet at the stage where the cash flow allows enough staff to run it like you need to run it.
Realistically even if you can take the good advice above you will still need to work long hours for the next while so it's all about using the little time you have left in the best way you can and going home at night feeling that you have spent your 12-15 hours well.

Brendan said:
Hi Bernie
If you can't afford a qualified accountant, maybe a friend who is successful in business can do it for you. Someone who can read a set of accounts and who understands marketing and sales. I am not sure if Enterprise Ireland provides the service.
Click to expand...
Enterprise Ireland don't really do that sort of thing but they, or your local county enterprise board, can hook you up with a mentor who can help.
 
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Bizz 1

Please read the Posting Guidelines and don't take such an important thread off topic.

Brendan

 
Purple's recomendation in relation to the mentor is a very good one. They don't tend to be accountants but they are well trained and will help you to help yourself.
 
Hi there,

I've heard of a company, www.actioncoach.com, they have offices dotted around the county i think, they do coaching etc in business and seem to be very good. Never used them, but plannin on doing so,

I think this may be what you need...
 
I'd strongly recommend to you the Michael Gerber book 'The E Myth Revisited' subtitled 'Why most small businesses don't work and what to do about it.'
It deals with the core issues of the owner trying to do it all - his core point is that the owner should be working 'on' the business, not 'in'
the business. It provides a guide to systemising very aspect of your business to the extent that you can start to hand off well-defined roles and responsibilites to others. It is also a sound template for business growth - by building a repeatable model it shows how you would prepare your business for expansion and ultimately for franchising. Although, the main thread revolves around a woman building a business making apple pie don't be deceived by the hippy-dippy anecdotes - this may just be the best business book I'll ever read!
 
Plato Ireland is a great source of help and support for owner / managers who find themselves in your type of position. As the last post said, it helps you work "on" the business. You also have the support, friendship and ideas of other owner/managers under the structure on a "parent" company. Goggle Plato Ireland and see it there is a location close to you.
 
Get in touch with a good Lifecoach. He/She might be able to help you to "turn things around" by enabling you to work "smarter not harder".
 
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