New companies which start on a shoestring share a common problem: too much to do, not enough people to do the tasks. It’s a fine line between finding what you are best at and delegating the non-genius work.

In my quest to break even, I have delegated the book keeping to my newly appointed book keeper who is also doing some admin work for me. Other than that, I am putting in the hours to manufacture everything myself to save on costs, but then I have the big picture and strategic stuff, that I have been trying to juggle. The production has been fine, and I love it, but I haven’t had much time for the strategic stuff which I enjoy too.

The orders are really increasing and though I have enjoyed working 15 hour days, (especially because it means that the business is growing!), this is just not realistic or healthy. This is the time I need to bring in reinforcements for production. I know a catering company with some spare capacity and they can help me with production, once per week to start with and then we’ll take it from there. Although this means less profit in the short term, this is more likely to lead to orders delivered on time, and then I will have time to move the business forward.
The difficulty lies in striking a fine balance...If anyone has any thoughts on how to achieve this, please get in touch on Twitter.