Running a small business and parenting a baby can be stressful, as you try to balance the demands of both at the same time. This series of articles explores some practical ways for you to manage your baby and business.
Key # 2: Where possible, delegate or outsource
Let’s start by looking at this in your home first, as freeing yourself from domestic labour as much as possible means that you have more time for earning an income within your business.
If you can afford it, hiring a cleaner or housekeeper is a simple way to reduce your workload in the home. The difficulty is if your financial situation doesn’t support this; and, the irony however is that what you can earn within your business is likely worth more than what would you pay for domestic help. If you can find a way to get started on funding this help, can you earn this money back? Review your budget and finances to see if this is a possibility.
It has been covered in a previous article how to share some of the parenting load with your significant other or support person to free you to work in your business. You may also negotiate this at other times, for example, for example, agreeing on a two-hour window on a Saturday and Sunday where your significant other, support person, or even babysitter, is primary caregiver for this brief window whilst you work.
If these sorts of hours don’t work for your business and you have a good financial case, you might be able to negotiate for your partner to work more flexibly so that you can operate in business hours (e.g., from 9 am – 10.30 am) whilst they care for baby, and they make up the hours in their role at another time. Anything can be possible if it’s important enough, and when you come it at flexibly.
However, the ideal scenario would be to delegate and outsource as much as you can within your business, and to ideally have these structures in place before the baby has arrived- but no one’s perfect, and the baby might already be here!
If your business is established enough to have staff and structures that don’t rely on you for goods and services- well done. Is there any more you can delegate? For example, upskilling a trusted staff member to do pays, rosters, or other tasks that you would usually hold on to. You may need to watch your thinking about this, as often business owners fall into the trap of thinking that no one can do it as well as they can. Yes, you are probably right; however, these additional tasks also add to your stress load, and they don’t have to. It can be more work in the short term to train staff, but the reduced workload in the bigger picture can be worth it. You may only need to monitor for quality control, rather than do the WHOLE task yourself. Are there any tasks that can be outsourced externally? For the reduced time and increased freedom, hiring any number of professionals (whether that be a cleaner for your business, an accountant, a web developer, and more) can be worth it.
Sole traders face additional challenges with delegating and outsourcing in your business because who do you delegate to? The work of hiring can be overwhelming on a good day, let alone when you’ve had a baby, but this may be one possibility. Or, you may rely more on outsourcing to relieve your load, such as leaning more heavily on an accountant or even turning to task outsourcing platforms to get those small but pesky jobs done.
