When you first started your business, the ‘DIY’ approach was a no-brainer.

One of your main objectives — hell, even your main objective — was to keep costs down. Besides, how hard could it be to update your website, send out a few emails, and keep on top of your accounting?

All in all, being in complete control of your brand-new venture made perfect sense back then.

I’d liken it to having a new baby – you feel like nobody knows it better, can look after it better, or nurture it in the same way that you can.

Fast-forward a year or two and you’re replying to customer enquiries at 11pm, trying to think of new content for Instagram, and piecing together a fresh email marketing campaign, all while eyeballing the clock and mentally calculating the number of hours of precious sleep you can catch before a new day begins.

Sound familiar?

I’m sure it’s no secret to anybody who’s taken a leap of faith and created their own business that being a small business owner often means wearing a lot of hats. But there comes a point when doing everything yourself stops being a sensible way to save money and starts being something that’s holding your business back.

”But how do I know when it’s time to start outsourcing?” I hear you cry.

Knowing exactly when to loosen the reins isn’t as easy as it sounds, and you may find yourself putting it off for months, even years, in the interest of keeping costs down and staying in complete control.

So, with that in mind, here are six signs it could be time to stop doing everything yourself and start delegating some of the jobs that have you questioning your sanity to somebody else.

1. Admin is taking over your life

Emails, invoices, scheduling, updating your website, social media… suddenly you’re an administrator instead of the person doing what you actually started the business to do.

As your business grows, so will the admin demands. Such is life.

While it’s a fantastic indication that your business is heading in the right direction and your hard work is finally starting to pay off, it can become harder and harder to appreciate that notion when you’ve got 43 unanswered emails in your inbox, a website that hasn’t been updated in five weeks, and no ideas for any fresh content for your socials.

The problem isn’t the admin itself; it’s that you’re eating into the time that you want to be spending on other parts of your business.

So, if you’re spending more time organising your business than actually working on it, it might be time to consider what you could realistically hand over to someone else. You certainly don’t need to outsource everything overnight, either.

If it feels more comfortable for you, tackle one thing at a time and start with the task that drains most of your time.

If this is running your social media accounts, for example, there are plenty of people out there who would be more than happy to take this off your plate.

2. You’re constantly working late just to keep up

If the only way of keeping your head above water means constantly working late into the evening and sacrificing every one of your weekends, this is a sure sign that something needs to change.

Sure, being your own boss comes with some disadvantages, one of them being that your working hours won’t always fit neatly into the typical 9–5 day. There will be busy periods and late nights that are required to get things finished. I’m sure this is something you were fully aware of before deciding to head out on your solo venture.

However, if working late and sacrificing every moment of your free time has become the norm instead of the exception, and, worst of all, you’re experiencing the dreaded ‘work-life negatively impacting social life’ predicament, you could have a workload problem rather than a time-management problem.

While making sacrifices when you first started your business worked for a while, constantly running on empty isn’t sustainable – particularly if you’re trying to grow your business at the same time.

You don’t need to work harder; you might just simply need to stop doing everything yourself.

3. You’re spending too much time on jobs you hate

Let’s be honest: there are probably parts of running a business that you don’t particularly enjoy. I doubt there’s a business owner alive that enjoys every aspect of it.

What is the thing (or things) you put off doing until the very last moment? Is it bookkeeping? Is it coming up with fresh content to keep your social media relevant? Is it trying to decipher why your website has suddenly decided to move everything three pixels to the left?

Whatever it is that keeps you up at night, you ultimately can do it yourself, but should you?

One of the biggest advantages of owning your own business is being able to focus on and make a living from the work you’re good at. So, spending hours of your time on tasks that drain the life out of you when someone else could not only do them quicker than you but better, too, starts to feel counterproductive.

Of course, outsourcing costs money, and this is where you have to decide what the time is actually worth to you. If paying someone to handle a task eases some mental strain, which in turn gives you several hours back to work with clients or simply switch off at the end of a busy day, it could be money well spent.

4. Your quality is starting to suffer

It’s inevitable that stretching yourself too thin will lead to a decline in the quality of your work eventually. This alone can allow thoughts like ‘maybe I’m not cut out for this’ to rear their ugly head.

But it’s important to remember that you’re one person. You can only do so much. That’s not philosophical or my attempt at validating you – it’s a fact.

Sure, you might be ticking everything off your to-do list, but with a growing workload, you can start rushing through things and failing to give them the time and attention they need.

For instance, you frantically tap out a blog post that would usually take you a couple of hours in 45 minutes. It’s not fact-checked, it’s sloppy but, most importantly, it’s soulless. It’s something you wouldn’t have dreamt about putting out there when you first set up your business, but you now convince yourself is ‘fine’ or ‘will do’ so that you can move on to your list of 200 other things you need to get done that day.

No business is flawless, but if you’re noticing a fairly consistent decline in the quality of what you’re doing, it could be time to get someone else on board to help you get back to having a workload that is manageable for one single person.

5. You’ve become the bottleneck for your business

Delaying outsourcing once your business has reached a certain milestone will usually lead to you becoming a bottleneck and holding the business back.

I know that may sound a little harsh, but let me explain.

Such things don’t happen because you’re doing anything wrong; they happen because absolutely everything has to go through you – every social media post, every email, every bit of content – and when you’re the only person who can get things done, there’s only so much your business can grow before you simply run out of time.

You might have brilliant ideas just waiting to be turned into reality, but you’re too bogged down with the day-to-day tasks to give them any attention. As a result, opportunities get pushed back, projects take longer than they should, and your to-do list carries on growing.

Delegating some of those jobs means you’re no longer the person standing in the way of everything getting done, and you can spend more time on the things that genuinely need you.

Because your business shouldn’t have to move at the speed of one person.

6. You’re OVER doing everything yourself

OK, this one can feel a little obvious.

However, it can be incredibly tempting to push yourself unnecessarily hard or stretch yourself too thin for too long in the interest of saving a little bit of extra cash.

It doesn’t even need to be solely about saving money – you’ve grown your business from nothing, nurtured it into something people are starting to take notice of, and you’re proud of your achievements.

You should be. But with these feelings can come a reluctance to open things up. Let’s go back to the new baby comparison – handing them over to daycare for the first time can be incredibly anxiety-provoking, and this isn’t much different from that.

Despite this, there will come a time (and I’ll assume that time could be now if you’re reading this post) when you know deep down that your workload has become unmanageable and the thought of someone being able to lighten your load even a little becomes more relieving than intrusive.

Conclusion

Running a business is a lot of work, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be involved in all of it. But there comes a time when doing it all yourself stops being productive and starts holding you back.

The key here is knowing when that is.

When somebody first starts a business, I have no doubt they would resonate with most, if not all, of the issues I’ve raised, but it’s likely that finances would be the main thing standing in the way of outsourcing, and that’s completely understandable. When you’re just starting out, every penny counts.

But as your business grows, so does the value of your time. Once things are ticking along nicely but you can relate to some of the signs I’ve mentioned here, it’s worth looking at the jobs that are eating away too much of your time (and sanity) and asking yourself whether you really need to be the one doing them.

The goal isn’t to do less for your business. It’s to give yourself more time to do the things that move it forward.