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The Delegators

NASE Members Find That They Can’t Do It All
By Jan Norman

Many people start their micro-businesses doing every chore themselves—from sales to emptying the wastebasket. Eventually wearing all the hats not only weighs heavily on the owner, but slows business growth as well.

There are only so many hours in the day and so much energy that solo operators can spend in their businesses. If they want to grow the enterprise—while keeping their health and sanity—they need to let go and pay someone to handle certain parts of the business.

You are, no doubt, thinking of all the reasons you can’t hand off tasks in your micro-business: You can’t afford employees in this bad economy. You don’t know how to hire and manage people. You can’t find qualified help. No one can do the work as well as you can.

“But take a look at the opportunity cost of that decision,” says Leila Mozaffari, director of the Orange County Small Business Development Center in California. “What business development activity do you not get around to because you are busy doing bookkeeping, for example?”

In other words, while you’re saving $20 an hour on a bookkeeper, you aren’t out cultivating work from customers that would pay $100 an hour.

Here’s the measure: If you make more money using your time to provide products and services than you can save by doing a task yourself, pay someone else to do that task.

Then, as hard as it seems in a bad economy, focus all your time and energy bringing in the paying customers.

Economic Reality
NASE Member Kyndra Miller, owner of the Los Angeles law firm Miller Entertainment Group Inc., certainly knows the value of an office assistant. For four years, Miller had an administrative assistant who handled general office work. But then the economy slowed. Miller had to let her assistant go in late 2008.

“I know the call is out for smal...