Avoid Small Business Burnout and Get Some Help

How many employees does it take to screw in a light bulb in a small business?

None.

The owner does it!

OK, that’s not strictly true for all small businesses, but if you look at the businesses that a lot of people call a “small business,” what you actually see is someone who is self-employed rather than a small business owner.

Self-Employment versus Small Business Ownership

From the outside, the self-employed person and the small business owner both look the same. They both own their businesses and they both sell something. In the startup phase, both will probably work long hours, and start to look a little worn-out.

That’s where the similarities end, and the differences start to show up. Business guru Robert Kiyosaki defines the difference like this:

The self-employed business owner wants to be the best in his or her field. The small business wants to work with the best in his or her field.

In other words, the values are different. The self-employed person wants to BE the best, so they spend all their time doing everything for their business so that they can be the best. The small business owners doesn’t want to do everything themselves. They want to develop a business that generates income and eventually runs itself. So instead of trying to be the best, they hire the best people. Why? So that they can eventually stop working in the business and have it still produce a passive stream of income.

Self-Employment Burnout

One way you can distinguish a self-employed person from a small business owner is that the self-employed person will experience burnout. Why? Because they have been doing everything for their business, day in and day out, for years. The small business owner long ago hired a competent staff and moved onto a different business (or went on vacation).

One person who has really recognized the need for self-employed people to get help for their burnout is bestselling author Tim Ferriss. One of the “homework assignments” that he gives business owners is to practice outsourcing tasks. That is, he strongly recommends that you hire a virtual assistant and delegate a certain percentage of your work to this assistant. Virtual assistants usually don’t live in the same town as you, and often work in a completely different country. Making use of a virtual assistant, who works for say $15-$20 per hour, frees you up for more important tasks, like strategizing business growth or developing marketing tactics. Getting help in the form of a virtual assistant also helps you avoid burnout. You learn to do only the tasks that only can do.

If you feel uncomfortable hiring someone to help you out, consider this: as a self-employed person, how much are you really earning per hour? Take the salary you pay yourself monthly and divide that by the number of hours you actually work each month. Be sure to include all the time you spend on lowly tasks like filing, restocking, documentation, and responding to routine inquiries. All of that goes on top of the time you spend actually practicing in your area of expertise, like accounting, marketing, or consulting.

When you honestly add up all the hours you work, and then divide that amount into your salary, chances are that you are not getting paid very much. You might actually make more money flipping burgers at your local burger joint. True, you would have to wear a really dorky uniform and work with junk food all day, but your paycheck might be bigger.

Hmm, gives you food for thought, doesn’t it? If you’re headed for a self-employment burnout, now might be the time to check out Tim Ferriss’ book and find yourself a virtual assistant. Check out Elance and other similar services where these assistants abound. Most of all, learn to enjoy letting go!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.

Photo credit: absentminded

Tags: burnout, Robert Kiyosaki, self-employment, small business owner

Are You Self-Employed or a Small Business Owner?

What If You Get Hit by a Beer Track Tomorrow?

This question may seem silly to you because you may think that any self-employed individual is also a small business owner. Technically this might be true but the difference in mindset between someone who is self-employed and someone who owns a small business is BIG. So what’s the difference between these two?

Leverage.

If you are self-employed you do everything for your business by yourself. You produce the product, make the sales, handle the accounting and finance, ship out the packages, and handle all the customer service issues. You are the company and the company is you. If you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow then your company goes down the toilet. It’s a bad scenario.

Small business owners, on the other hand, don’t do everything in the business by themselves. They leverage the efforts of other people in multiple ways.

Small Business Owners:
- hire employees
- outsource tasks like accounting, payroll, marketing, and order fulfillment
- partner with other compatible businesses to share marketing and promotional expenses
- leverage investment funds from business partners and/or banks
- hire managers to handle daily administration

In other words, small business owners are like general contractors: they pull together the resources necessary to operate the business but don’t necessarily spend a lot of hands-on time in the business. If an employee becomes unable to work or an outsourcing company fails to fulfill their contract, the business doesn’t die overnight. Other employees can be hired and work can be outsourced to a different company. Best of all, the business can continue to generate revenue and profit for you, the small business owner, on a continuous basis.

Have you taken a look at the way you run your business lately? Are you operating from the self-employment model or the small business owner model? The self-employment model means you are a slave to your business and can never leave to go on vacation. Being a small business owner means you can come and go as you please, depending on the extent to which you have leveraged other resources to run your business on a daily basis.

MLM as Leverage
One way some people have chosen to move away from self-employment and into small business ownership is to leverage the power of MLM, or network marketing. With MLM, the parent company handles product production, order fulfillment, accounting and finance, and often even worldwide promotion. As a business partner you only handle direct marketing and sales, using marketing methods of your choice, and get a check for your efforts. MLM is a very inexpensive way to move into small business ownership because you can leverage the power of a very large parent company for a small investment.

Having said all of that, I have to insert a word of caution here: it’s still possible to run an MLM business from the self-employment model. If you try to handle all the sales and marketing yourself you will still be self-employed. Unless and until you bring in new business partners underneath you in your network who will also do sales and marketing, you haven’t created the maximum leverage in your business. Think about it. If you handle all the marketing by yourself and you get hit by a beer truck tomorrow, your income still goes down the toilet. On the other hand, if you get hit by a beer truck but your business partners are still out there marketing, you still get a check. Again, it’s all about how much you can leverage the efforts of others for your small business.

Photo credit: I Love Hitachino Nest Beer

Tags: self-employed, self-employment, small business, small business owner