In most situations, being called a hard worker is probably the biggest compliment you could obtain.
So it’s no surprise that small business owners believe that hard work is part of the entrepreneurial journey.
Hard work is celebrated as something that achieves success.
Unfortunately, hard work has become synonymous with extensive working hours and therefore lack of sleep.
We’ve been led to believe that long working hours show dedication, and commitment.
When actually it’s connected to lack of systems and processes.
Yet there are successful people brag about how many hours they worked to achieve their initial success, we look at that as a road map.
What research tells us about working long hours?
- A 2017 research showed that people working long hours are significantly more depressive and experience decreased sleep quality and anxiety symptoms.[1]
- A 2018 study shows that long working hours don’t mean more productivity. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.[2]
- A 2019 study showed that those countries that work the most often aren’t the most productive.[3]
- A 2020 study showed that during the pandemic, people have put even more long working hours than before, leading to burnout.[4]
Why Work Longer Hours?
To be Successful: : Many small-business owners get seduced into thinking the more hours they clock, the quicker success will come.
There is this mindset that once you get past this next thing, things will be different. It’s okay to work crazy hours and grind it out because it’s only temporary. In the small business world temporary becomes long-term very quickly.
If you want to get traction and scale your business, then scale your business with outsourcing. Starting with a virtual assistant outsourcing is much more efficient than any of your long hours. Getting away from repetitive administrative tasks alone will be a game changer for your small business!
Save Money. Small business owners are notorious for thinking that if they do it themselves they’ll be saving money. It’s just cheaper than hiring somebody. this is what I described as damaging overhead. You are the most costly and damaging overhead for your business.
Think about it like this, if you could cell your services for $100 package. When you’re working on your business late into the evening, you’re not doing revenue-generating work. This means you’re actually billing your business $100. So by doing it yourself you’re actually costing your business way more than If you hired an outsourcer.
Saving money is one of the many benefits to outsourcing Filipino virtual assistants. Make this one change in your entrepreneur mindset and you will see a big difference!
Don’t Want To Manage People Many small-business owners think the idea of managing a team is simply exhausting. With so much on their plate already it just seems like more than they can manage.
When you scale your business with outsourcing and hire a virtual assistant they can easily become your project manager. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not, my clients love this part the most. All you need is a business process that supports this and suddenly you have a team member that manages you instead of you managing them. It’s just one of the many benefits of virtual staff.
This is because they’re following the old school mentality of the parentified system that so many of us are used to as employees. You assigned work and check on the work. Similar to a parent checking on a child or teacher is checking on a student. When your team is set up correctly, they actually managed you instead of you having to check on them.
3 Reasons To Stop Working Longer Hours
Productivity: The longer you work the less productive you become. There are endless studies to show this going far back as Henry Ford on the assembly line.
Let’s just take a moment and use our common sense. When you’re exhausted it’s like you have a hang over. There is a reason that during war time, sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Yet, you think you can push through it …one more time to get “caught up.”
The entrepreneurial mindset has to switch from sweat to strategy! With all the resources and outsourcing solutions in the modern business world, it’s easy to make a change!
Creativity: Your creativity decreases as your sleep decreases.
Lack of sleep means lack of great ideas for your small business.
It also means lack of empathy, emotional intelligence and decrease in the quality of interpersonal skills. What this means is you’re not a fun small business owner. It means your outsourcers are likely not getting the most job satisfaction that you want to get.
Hiring a VA only works if you are set up to get the benefits of outsourcing virtual assistance. How do you do that? By having systems and processes in play instead of always stealing from sleep.
It also means that you are likely rubbing people the wrong way or not presenting as well as you would like to potential prospects.
Mistakes: For a small business owner mistakes are costly. Always mindful of the overhead, the small business owners is always thinking of how to save money and reinvest in the company.
Well, mistakes are costly. It actually takes about 2-3 the cost of anything to find, and fix a mistake then to do it right the first time.
Imagine you’re running to the grocery store. You hop in your car, you have your list and you run around the store grabbing items. You line up, cash out, and rush home. It takes about 20 minutes before you figure out you’re missing something off the list. It was a necessity. Back to the store you go!
It takes the same time, to get to the store, line up and go through the whole process again. Plus it took you time to find the mistake. These things are very costly and add up!
Business process outsourcing will allow you to build system and process so you are not running around trying to remember things. Businesses are not run on memory!
When you’re running around trying to do everything from social media to providing for your clients, you’re set up for failure. It negatively impacts your customer service and it doesn’t need to be this way.
There are very affordable virtual assistant companies and companies in the Philippines that can give you instant relief.
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