The goal of every start-up business, including process
service, should be to reach a point where you have so much work you cannot
reasonably handle it by yourself. Ideally you have already decided how big you
want to grow and how to handle the growth.
What makes this tricky is that growth all too often has a mind of its
own and doesn’t always follow plan.
Hopefully, you have written at least a simple, basic business plan
(nothing fancy required) and have set out the action(s) to take when your
business outgrows your personal capacity. Just be flexible and go with the flow
when you have your growth spurts, but be realistic in what you can reasonably
handle without affecting customer service and your health, both physically and
mentally.
What I’m talking about is expanding your business through
delegation. But, you say, it’s just me and I don’t have any employees to
delegate to. Neither did I when it happened to me many years ago. But after
considerable reflection on where my business was and where I wanted it to go, I
realized that I would need to bring on additional servers or a partner.
At the time I was working 80 hours a week and the annual
gross revenue of the company was only $69,000. The following year, I brought on
servers to help out and an admin person in the office. Our gross revenue shot
up to $105,000 and my work hours dropped to 55 per week. Even with the
additional expense of servers and an admin, I worked fewer hours and made more
in net profit. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
You don’t have to hire employees. You can contract process
servers and even admin help. With the convenience and flexibility of the
“Cloud” so much can be accomplished today between work colleagues without ever
meeting face to face. If you can handle the mandatory on-site paperwork (think
filing) a virtual assistant can often take care of all the other admin work.
So if you've reached that plateau in your process service business where all you do is work in the business with no time to work on the business, consider delegating. If you're like me, you'll be glad you did.
