You learn a trade.

You build up experience.

You eventually decide to work for yourself.

And somehow you end up with two jobs.

The first is the one you actually signed up for.

The second starts when you get home.

Emails. Quotes. Invoices. Missed calls. WhatsApps. Booking jobs into the diary. Chasing customers. Posting on Facebook.

Nobody really mentions that bit when you decide to work for yourself.

Being self-employed doesn’t just mean doing the work

When you’re employed by somebody else, there’s usually someone somewhere dealing with the things happening behind the scenes.

Someone answers the phone.

Someone sends the invoice.

Someone books the job.

Someone replies to the email.

Someone updates the customer.

When you’re working for yourself?

That someone is you.

You’re the tradesman.

You’re also the receptionist.

The administrator.

The accounts department.

The customer service team.

The marketing department.

And occasionally the complaints department too.

The workday doesn’t finish when you leave site

This is the part we think gets overlooked.

You’ve finished your last job.

You’ve packed the van.

You’ve driven home.

Technically, you’ve finished work.

Except you haven’t.

You’ve got two missed calls to return.

Someone messaged you on WhatsApp at 2pm.

Another customer wants to know when you’re sending their quote.

There’s an invoice you forgot to send yesterday.

Someone has messaged your Facebook Page.

And you need to work out where you can fit a new job into next week’s diary.

Suddenly it’s 8pm.

You’re off the tools, but you’re still at work.

Being busy can actually make the problem worse

Getting busier should be a good thing.

More enquiries.

More customers.

More jobs.

More money coming into the business.

But every new job also creates more admin.

Another customer to communicate with.

Another appointment to organise.

Another quote.

Another invoice.

Another payment to keep track of.

Another set of messages.

The thing that’s growing your business can also start making it harder to manage.

“I’ll sort it tonight”

We’ve all said it.

I’ll reply later.

I’ll send the quote tonight.

I’ll call them when I get home.

I’ll sort the invoice tomorrow.

Then something else happens.

And suddenly the customer who asked for a quote on Tuesday is still waiting on Friday.

Not because you don’t care.

Because you’re trying to do everything.

Customers don’t see what’s happening behind the scenes

The customer doesn’t necessarily know you’ve been on site for ten hours.

They don’t know you’ve got six other people waiting for replies.

From their point of view, they asked a question and nobody answered.

Or you said you’d send a quote and it hasn’t arrived.

That’s where being overloaded with admin can start affecting the customer experience.

You can be brilliant at your trade and still lose work because the office side of the business can’t keep up.

The answer isn’t always “work harder”

This is something small business owners are constantly told.

Work harder.

Get up earlier.

Stay up later.

Be more organised.

Answer messages during lunch.

Do your invoices on Sunday.

At some point, though, there are only so many hours in the day.

If you’re already working all day and spending your evenings running the office, squeezing another hour out of yourself isn’t necessarily the answer.

Sometimes the business has simply reached the point where one person can’t comfortably do everything anymore.

That doesn’t necessarily mean employing someone

A lot of tradesmen probably reach this point and think:

“I’m not big enough to have office staff.”

And you might be right.

Employing somebody full-time could be completely unnecessary.

You might only need a few hours of support.

You might need someone answering calls while you’re working.

You might need help managing enquiries and bookings.

You might need someone keeping an eye on the inbox.

The choice isn’t necessarily:

Do everything yourself

or

Employ a full-time receptionist.

There’s a lot in between.

Your time has a value too

If you’re spending five hours every week doing admin, those five hours aren’t free just because you’re doing them yourself.

They’re five hours of your time.

Could you have spent them doing another job?

Quoting for more profitable work?

Growing the business?

Or, just as importantly, spending your evening doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with work?

Not every hour needs to be monetised.

Sometimes getting your time back is valuable in itself.

You Didn’t Start a Trade Business to Become an Administrator

Paperwork is always going to be part of running a business.

There’s no getting around that.

But that doesn’t mean you personally need to spend every evening doing all of it.

If you’ve got everything under control yourself, brilliant.

Keep doing what works.

But if the business is getting busier and the admin is starting to follow you home every night, it might be time to ask whether your time is being spent in the right place.

At Toucan Do Business, that’s exactly the problem we’re here to help with.

We help tradesmen manage the office side of their business, from calls and customer enquiries to diaries, emails, admin and social media.

You do the work. We help keep everything behind the scenes moving.

Because you didn’t learn a trade to spend your evenings doing paperwork.

From site to sofa without the paperwork.

Fancy a Brew? ☕

Come and have a chat with us.