At some point in your small business journey, there comes a time when you realise that no matter how hard you try or how many hours you work, you just cannot do everything there is to do, even if you wanted to!

Ask yourself this… Do you really want to work yourself into the ground and burn out just as you’re on the cusp of taking your business to the next level? Well, luckily you don’t have to! You actually have a couple of options available to you.

You could either take on an employee, but I’m sure you know that having an employee on your payroll is a huge decision, with many issues and cost implications to bear in mind. Also, it may not be an option at all if you work from home.

The other, perhaps more sensible option, is to outsource areas of your business to professional independent contractors like Virtual Assistants, Web Companies and Bookkeepers - well that’s what they are there for after all.

Outsourcing to other freelance small businesses, Virtual Assistants for example, has lots of benefits, VA’s will be able to help you with a variety of your business tasks; they are highly skilled and can be used as and when you need them, so you are in control of costs all the time.

When you stop and think about it, there are so many tasks that you do on a daily basis – probably very routine tasks, which take up so much of your valuable time. Maybe there are things you don’t like doing or are not particularly good at, things that end up taking you ages to complete but, ultimately, need to be done. It all takes your precious time away from doing the things that you should be doing, want to do and, more importantly, the work that will help you grow your business and bring in the money.

I would hazard a guess that you didn’t go into business to spend all day sorting receipts, creating invoices or even updating products on a website? All of these tasks (and so many more) can be outsourced. There are lots of areas of your business that can be outsourced. If you find yourself a good, reliable Virtual Assistant, you will be amazed at what a positive effect it can have on your business and even your home life.

Don’t get me wrong, outsourcing can be a very scary prospect, especially when you are so used to doing everything yourself. You have to trust that these people will have your businesses best interests at heart. Will they complete the work at the standard you like and are used to? A good independent contractor or Virtual Assistant will, as long as you do your research and choose wisely and they'll often go above and beyond what‘s required. The work they do on your business reflects their business, so why wouldn’t they do a good job? Their reputation is on the line too!

Of course, there is always a small risk that you will find someone who doesn’t meet with your approval, but without taking that chance; it really will hinder the opportunity to unlock your businesses growth potential.

Is outsourcing really such a big deal?

Think about it, you outsource areas of your life all the time, whether it be getting a cleaner into your home, paying a childminder to care for your children or even using a gardener or window cleaner - it’s all a form of outsourcing.

Trusting someone with the care of your children is a massive decision but people do it all the time, which successfully allows them to go to work and create an income. You are outsourcing areas of your business, which will allow you to free up some of your time to focus on growing your business - it’s not as scary as you think and it really does make good business sense.

If you are worried, start small and build up on the tasks you outsource. I doubt that, once you start outsourcing, you will ever look back. But, if you don’t take that risk and decide to leave things as they are, how will you ever get past the stage your business is currently at and move it forward to the next level? Worse still, you will burn yourself out before you even get there!

As a big supporter of women in business, every Wednesday, the lovely Jacqueline Gold (CEO of Ann Summers) asks female entrepreneurs to send her a tweet about their business. From all the tweets she then selects three businesses, which she thinks look interesting with strong brand values and have the potential to grow and succeed in their industry. She looks for well-designed websites and entrepreneurs who appear to have good business sense and who have thought about what the consumer wants and how to deliver it.

She then retweets her three winning businesses to her followers, which currently stands at over 46,000. (She’s one popular lady!)

Imagine how excited and honoured I was, this week, to discover that I had been chosen as a winner by Jacqueline which she retweeted to all of her followers?! I was in the White Rose Shopping Centre, in Leeds, at the time, meeting up with a friend over coffee - I think the whole place must have heard me!

I also received this lovely badge that I can display with pride on my website, to show that Jacqueline is a fan of my business. I am overwhelmed at the response I have already received, with lots of enquiries coming in as a result.

What a fantastic way to end the year for Little Miss Office!

As you may have read in my last post, Little Miss Office has taken a slightly different direction to its original plan! Recently, we’ve found that more and more clients are requiring a more marketing-based service and this seems to have had a significant effect on, what is traditionally, the least busy time of the year… But we’re definitely NOT complaining!

In January, we spent a lot of time attending planning and strategy meetings, with our clients, creating and developing marketing ideas for them, as well as formulating marketing plans and campaigns, ready to be implemented in 2013. So, now February is here, we’re busy getting stuck into many of these plans!

It’s also been that nasty time of year for many small businesses… dare I mention it?? The dreaded Tax Return! So, we’ve also been up to our necks in receipts and invoices, ensuring the returns were submitted by HMRC’s deadline. So, it’s fair to say, it’s been pretty manic here really!

I’ve had so many conversations with people recently asking me (with the sympathetic tilted head – you know the one!) “How’s business been in January?” probably anticipating a reply of something like “Well, a bit quiet really, but it’s January”. Well, I’m happy to say that January has been a great start to the year for Little Miss Office and long may it continue!

We thought what better opportunity than to use our very first blog post to tell you all about our decision to have a slight change of business name!

Here goes... after much thought (and chin stroking!) we have decided to change Little Miss Office Virtual Assistant to Little Miss Office Business Services.

“Why?” we hear you cry?!

Well, since LMO launched its Virtual Assistant (VA) service, carrying out business administration tasks, like typing, invoicing, diary management etc, we have found that the business has taken a slightly different direction than we first thought.

We’re finding that more of the clients we are working for are requiring more marketing based support (which is actually our background) with a particular demand for social media management and marketing communications (posters, leaflets, copywriting, design work, email marketing and other digital marketing media).

We’re still here, of course, if you do need the more day-to-day style administrative tasks carrying out and we’re happy to talk to you about anything like that, we just felt that the VA tag didn’t, perhaps, say just what Little Miss Office can do for your business.

We've still got a way to go updating our website to fully reflect our new name and services but this is a start.

So there you go! Welcome to Little Miss Office Business Services!