The Lesson of Learned Exhaustion: Why I Ditched the Doing Everything Myself and Built a Thriving Business

I get it, I hear it daily. How can I trust someone with my business? How can I delegate and trust someone?

It’s not easy and delegation is like a muscle. At first, it’s weak and the more you exercise it, the easier it gets. Just like going to the gym to work out in a long time (like a year) - you pick up some weights and think, it’s not too bad and perhaps go a little crazy. You think, I gotta make up for lost time and then 30 minutes later, your arms and legs are so wobbly, it’s hard to walk. You don’t want to push it too hard or you will be sore for days and not want to work again for another year!

That's why today I wanted to share with you a story. My story.

The year was 2008, I was 3 years into my web design business and had a lot of clients and things were looking great. One day, I noticed some sharp pain in my elbows. I thought, I’ll keep an eye on it and see how it goes. It got worse the more I typed and at one point, I couldn’t ignore it. It felt like my elbows were on fire.

At that point, I was doing everything in my business, the sales, the marketing, building every website, project management and accounting. I was under charging for my work and falling behind in my deadlines. I was falling behind in my knowledge of web design and I was so embarrassed. It was part of my identity to be a web designer, I had owned this title for 7 years.

I started losing sleep and in a bad cycle of being tired all day and not sleeping well at night. I started dreading the morning and seeing all of the angry emails from clients or phone calls. I was falling apart.

I had to look deep within myself and be honest. I couldn’t do all the things, it wasn’t working. There had to be another way.

I did an assessment of what I enjoyed and what I was good at. It was very apparent I wasn’t enjoying the web design. I was falling behind in the current changes and wasn’t excited about learning more code.

On the other hand, I was great at working with clients and communicating (when I gave myself time!) I liked managing the projects and creating timelines, etc.

It became clear that I shouldn’t be doing web design. If I wanted to keep my business, I had to contract that part out.

Luckily, I had a few designer colleagues I knew. I reached out and asked if they would be a contractor for me if I gave them work. All of them said - “YES, I would gladly love to work with you as a project manager”. They loved the idea of me interfacing with the client and only focusing on the work, not the client communications as well.

Slowly I started phasing out projects that I was building out and coding, raised my prices and worked on acquiring projects that I could delegate out.

I made a LOT of mistakes. From quoting a project wrong, to missing deadlines, and miscommunication with the client and my contractor. It was painful but the more I practiced that muscle, it improved.

I only wished I had someone like myself, with over 13 years of experience working with contractors, to help me navigate and learn the ropes. I would have had quicker success and wouldn’t have suffered as much!

You don’t have to go it alone when you want to hire a contractor! I’ve been there, many times, and have made every mistake. I know what it takes to help you successfully hire a web designer, virtual assistant, copywriter and many more.

Email me if you are struggling with delegation, I’d love to know how I can help you today so your 2022 can be amazing (and not filled with suffering or challenges!)