Collapsing businesses share some common traits.  

For instance, someone leaves, but they’re not replaced. Instead, their work gets spread to another employee, but then that person leaves, and the hot potato of duties gets tossed to another employee who can’t throw it elsewhere.  

Eventually, you have one or two people who are your workhorse “do-it-all” employees who are completely burnt out and desperate to leave. The “do-it-all” folks feel punished for their abilities, not rewarded. They take on more duties without corresponding pay and begin to feel suffocated.  

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The business owner doesn’t want the workhorses to be under such strain, but they can’t find anyone qualified to do the necessary work for the pay they can afford.  

Even if the job is getting done and operations are running smoothly under the workhorses, the owner shouldn’t believe things are fine because they’re completely vulnerable. One more departure, and they’ll drown. 

As a business owner, I’ve felt this pain. I understand what true workhorses mean to a company, and I also know that many business owners adopt the “I’ll be the workhorse” attitude and try to do everything themselves. 

It’s admirable — I love a fierce work ethic — but the inability to build a functioning team results in business failure. You can’t be everything, and you can’t expect one or two people to be that either. Your systems and processes must have flexibility and redundancy for your business to have staying power. 

Business Owners, Are You Struggling to Take a Break? 

But how? Inflation drives up the cost of everything, including your operational expenses. You don’t have the budget to hire full-time local employees. But if you keep dumping more duties on your workhorses, you know they’ll leave you.  

An overstressed office is like a pressure cooker. The strain builds and needs to be released. Can you reduce that strain, or will it keep expanding and explode on you? 

Thinking of Doing it All Yourself? 

You have to find a way to ease that pressure. 

Here’s how:  

• Identify three major pressure points on your workhorses. What’s eating their time and causing them stress? What could you take off their plate to give them more control of their days and more job satisfaction? You need to keep them!

•  Find a cost-effective place to put these three duties. Is it some form of automation? Well, perhaps, but that’s also an upfront cost, and trusting AI for decision-making holds plenty of risks. So, look at all your options for handling the transfer of tasks to a quality, cost-effective alternative.

• Use cost savings to invest in your business. Perhaps you put money back into your workhorses to retain them. Maybe you look at other needs. But find a way to use savings in one part of your business to empower other parts.

Want to Bring the Best People into Your Business? 

We created HireSmart Virtual Employees to be your tool to fix this “do-it-all” pressure cooker problem. We’ve lived in your shoes and didn’t like the strains of doing it all ourselves or overburdening one or two people with more than they could handle.  

Over a decade ago, we recognized that global hiring is the solution. The Web changed everything about office work. Anything you can do with a phone or a computer can be handled wherever there’s a quality employee with a good internet connection. You can see this, too, right? But how do you leverage this fact to your advantage? That’s the kicker. 

We figured this out for you. We did the labor-intensive work of finding a highly educated, English-speaking market — the Philippines — with a much lower cost of living, and then we collaborated with a Filipino-based company to make sure we met all of that country’s laws and labor regulations, and we worked relentlessly to set up the best system possible to find the most qualified employees in that market who are specifically suited to our clients’ needs.  

We then set up processes to ensure each potential virtual employee is carefully vetted and trained to meet our clients’ expectations. Before onboarding, we put your virtual employee through a 40-hour certification program to give them an overview of what they’ll be doing. We also spend those hours further evaluating them to make sure they meet our SMARTER core values and are truly right for you.  

You pay a flat rate to us (at a fraction of your local hire), and we provide a full-time, highly vetted office employee who works solely for you (no moonlighting allowed). Those employees receive free health and dental coverage (at no cost to you), scholarships for their children, leadership training opportunities, and ongoing support from our staff.  

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You get the ability to manage your office workflow, the option of scaling up your operations, and, most of all, a tool to eliminate the chaos factor of an overstrained pressure cooker.  

Don’t let it explode! 

Take action and picture your evenings without work stress on your mind. 

Our clients share that trait. They’ve escaped the “do-it-all” exhaustive cycle that burns out owners and their workhorses. 

You can, too, and we’d love to assist you on that journey.

Click here to set up a chat about making this happen.