Are you feeling overwhelmed with trying to run your business AND do everything else you need to do in life to survive? I know many people online will tell you that the cure for business overwhelm is to delegate.
This advice to delegate is true and good, but what if you can’t afford to delegate? What if your business is growing but it’s still so small and you know that you can barely afford to pay your expenses, let alone hire on a virtual assistant to help you out?
I totally get it because it was a good 4+ years of me running a business before I began regularly paying a virtual assistant to help out. In the beginning, we needed every penny we made from the business to either invest back into the business or to pay for our living expenses. Taking some of the business income and investing it into hiring someone was just out of the question for the first few years.
So what do you do if your business is growing and you’re feeling overwhelmed with all there is to do but you can’t afford to hire on help? Here are some suggestions:
1. Streamline Your Life
If you are going to be a successful business owner, you are going to have to get really focused on what really matters and become adept at saying no to the things that just aren’t or can’t be a priority in your life right now. When you say yes to one thing, you have to say no to other things. What are you going to say no to so you can say yes to your business?
Practical Ideas:
- Use paper plates for meals. (You can get them very inexpensively at Aldi or Dollar Tree or Costco.)
- Become best friends with your crockpot and stick with very simple meals (I’m a big fan of the Eat at Home Crockpot Menu Service — and it’s just a few dollars per week to have someone plan your menu and grocery list for you!)
- Buy simple convenience foods a few times per week to save yourself time.
2. Simplify Your Expectations
We put so much pressure on ourselves to feel like we have to live up to certain expectations — in our work, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our parenting, in our home management, in our physical appearance, and so on. By doing this, we often add extra stress and responsibilities that are just eating at our time and energy.
Now, hear me out: I think we should have great priorities, but we also need to give ourselves grace to realize that no one person can do everything well. So give yourself grace, and stop expecting that you can do all.the.things.
Practical Ideas:
- Look at your schedule and responsibilities and ask yourself, “Is there anything on here that I don’t need to be doing at this season?”
- Lower your standards on what a clean and organized house looks like. Good enough is good enough right now.
- Focus on the the few areas in your business where you’re seeing the most return on your investment and set your other ideas to the back burner for now. (Newsflash: You will be smart to learn to do this well now, because even when you have a team someday, you’ll be more effective and productive if you don’t spread everyone too thin. Remember my Focus & Finish mantra?)
3. Set Good Boundaries
If you’re not careful, having your own business can completely take over your life. If you don’t set good boundaries, pretty soon, you’ll find that you are almost always working or thinking about work.
This will not only frustrate those closest to you, it’s a recipe for personal burnout and business failure. You need to have healthy boundaries and breathing room in your life if you want to be successful as a business owner.
Practical Ideas:
- Set specific work hours and be committed to them (not rigidly, but be consistent with it). If possible, compartmentalize work hours and non-work hours and don’t multi-task between the two.
- Work fewer hours. Remember that the work will fill up the time you allow it, so you’re often more productive when you don’t work as much.
- Take time off. Every single week. No matter how much you feel like you have to do, you will be healthier and happier if you give yourself at least one day or one afternoon completely offline each week.
4. Share Responsibilities
Just because you don’t have a paid assistant right now doesn’t mean that you can’t accept or ask for help! It might take a little creativity and thinking outside the box or the willingness to get brave and vulnerable and ask for help, but it could make such a difference in your life to feel like you have help and aren’t trying to go it alone.
Practical Suggestions:
- If you’re married, talk to your spouse about sharing some of the cooking, errands, or housework.
- If you have family nearby, accept any offers for help!
- Swap childcare with a friend — maybe one afternoon you watch her kids so she has the afternoon off and one afternoon she watches your kids so you can work.
5. Stop Comparing
For years, I had tried (and failed) to live up to the image I had created in my head of the perfect wife and mom and business owner I thought I was supposed to be. When I gave that up and realized I was just going to be the best me I could be, there was so much freedom!
Practical Suggestions:
- Unsubscribe from any email newsletter or magazine or subscription that doesn’t encourage and inspire you as a work-at-home entrepreneur.
- Remember that you are working from home. Your life is going to look very different from others who aren’t working from home.
- If you are struggling with feeling like you’re not enough and that you don’t measure up, I’d encourage you to seriously consider counseling as there might be some deeper issues at play here.
Know an affordable option for hiring skilled VAs? Leave a comment and let us know! I love hearing about new, budget-friendly ways for new bloggers to grow their business!
Well, my strategy is to find people that aren’t skilled and higher them. Then I can pay a lower wage and they can grow with my business. There is training time, but I’m providing jobs to stay at home moms that are in the same boat as me. I see it as a win win. The more my business grows, the more I can pay the team.
Thanks so much for sharing!
Love this! its what I want to aspire to.
This is really helpful, especially about working less hours to be more productive. If I sit down “to work” without a clear objective I waste a lot of time! And paper plates…definitely going to do that this summer 🙂
I’m so grateful this was helpful!
If you have teenagers, you can also engage them. My kids have helped me with tasks such as proofreading and creating graphics. They love to contribute and I love that we get to spend quality time together working together.
Great idea! Thanks for sharing!
I only do dishes and laundry during the week now. I switched to meals that take 30 min or less to make. I hired a housecleaner to come twice a month to do my bathroom and kitchen and switched to eco-friendly paper plates. My sister moved to back to my state so cheap childcare is also now available. Thinking of also outsourcing some of my post writing to someone on fivver or using PLR to help fill in gaps. Thanks for this article!
These are fantastic suggestions! Thanks for sharing!
I may miss understand, but if you have a virtual assistant are you really doing your blog?
A virtual assistant is just someone who helps you with parts of your blog that might be overwhelming, you aren’t good at, or you just don’t have enough time to do, etc. I have a small team who helps me with creating graphics, editing videos, vetting deals for MoneySavingMom.com, putting together deal posts, scheduling posts on Facebook, helping me with emails, setting up courses on our course portal, etc. That way, I can focus on writing posts, answering emails, producing courses, doing live videos, interacting with my followers, etc. I try to focus most of my time on those things that only I can do — which mostly involves producing content and engaging with my readers.
There’s no way I could run the blog all by myself with how much it has grown — even if I worked every waking hour! That’s where having virtual assistants can be amazing and so helpful!
I love all these practical suggestions, Crystal! It sounds silly, but for some reason, it never occurred to me to try and do less. I just get grouchy at myself when I can’t keep up! Since I’m in the first year of blogging, it’s basically all I think about, but setting designated work hours to hone productivity is an excellent idea. Asking for help is something I may never be good at, haha. As far as not being able to afford an assistant, I’ve always thought it would be useful if two bloggers could trade/barter services. If one person is great at proofreading and the other better at graphic design, they could help each other out, utilizing their strengths. Maybe that’s idealistic, but it sure would come in handy!
I’m so glad this was helpful to you — and I also love your idea of bartering!!
You can always hire someone who’s new as a VA! I know I’m struggling to get my VA business going – I’m willing to work for rates a more experienced VA would probably laugh at, but I need the experience.
But otherwise – find the things that give you the most return on your investment. And remember that “investment” doesn’t necessarily mean “money” – it’s time too! Crockpot meals are a great start, but look into making freezer meals – you can make two at once and have one now and one later that way!
Always head into every day with a plan. Yes, plans can change (especially when you’re a mom – kids are GREAT at making sure plans change!) but making your to-do list the night before and having a list of things that you need to do gives you clear goals for the day. Feel free to put little things on there too – “take out the trash” totally counts and crossing something off makes you feel productive!
And batch tasks! You might write blog posts one day, make graphics the next. Doing the same sort of task keeps you in the mindset for that task.
Such great tips here! Thanks for sharing! And you are so wise to be willing to get the experience to build your business!
How much time is necessary to grow a blog (and not at a snail’s pace?) I work full time at a job I love, commute 2 hours per day, have a 2yo and 4yo, don’t have family in the new town we just moved to, and my husband works on the opposite coast of the US often which leaves me solo. We have some medical debt we would like paid off ASAP so I’m looking to bring in extra money. I’m currently getting up at 4:30am which allows me an hour to work on my side projects and really trying to stick to 7 hours a night of sleep. My youngest is an early riser (often 5:45am!) unlike her older sister who is the better sleeper. Is it realistic to expect anything to result in a reasonable timeframe (I know better than to expect anything overnight) in only an hour of work in the morning before my daughter wakes up?
I finally got to answer your question in a video here: https://www.facebook.com/yourbloggingmentor/videos/1194685200674233/
Thank you so very much, Crystal! Your response was so helpful and encouraging! Thank you for what you do. xoxo – Elizabeth
You’re so welcome! I’m grateful that it was helpful!
I’m brainstorming right now with a family member who would like to make extra income! I need to make a certain amount to pay my expenses, but we’re working on a “pay as we profit” plan that would enable me to grow more, and her to make money from home!