060: Life admin for small business owners

In this episode we interviewed Lee Doherty about how small business owners can drop their mental load and address their personal life admin, while streamlining their business admin.

Lee Doherty is the founder of Admin & Co, a market leader in the outsourcing of everything administration. As a senior administration expert with over 30 years of experience, Lee runs a team of  Online Business Managers and Virtual Assistants.

She supports small business owners to become future-focused, less overwhelmed, less stressed, and to get back in the control seat of their business. She reviews, then does, then manages the tasks that small business owners shouldn’t be doing, don’t know how to do, or have time to do, so that they are freed to focus on the income and revenue tasks to grow their business.

Our recent Australian survey revealed that freelancers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners were increasingly overwhelmed by life admin because it was an additional burden to the business admin that they also had to manage.

So we turned to Administration professional Lee Doherty to get all her top tips.

In this fun-filled chat:

• Lee reveals that Life Admin or as she calls it “Fadmin” is the same as business admin – it’s important to have the right structures in place to deal with it.
• Lee discusses the importance of getting key structures in place including your schedule (particularly for families) and a budget.
• We discuss the importance of  scheduling in time for both admin and self-care – setting boundaries and getting clear on what is important to you.
• We discuss the challenges of sharing life admin with your partner and Lee acknowledges that in her household she handles most of the life admin.
• We discuss the value of taking time away with your partner to discuss important life decisions and agree your goals – and how this sets you up to decide the life admin that is important for your household in your stage of life.
• We discuss how sometimes people realise they are operating their life admin as though they were a single childfree adult but in fact their life has materially changed and the life admin systems have not caught up with the complexity of their life.
• Lee also discusses the importance of enabling your children and teaching them life admin skills.
• We talk about the shame and inadequacy many people feel when they are seeking support or outsourcing
• We talk about the opportunity cost (and value of time) of not outsourcing
• We talk about what you need to prepare before you outsource: a task audit, documenting your processes (consider using loom), accepting it will take time to learn, and setting the acceptable standard.

LIFE ADMIN RESOURCES

Admin&Co – Lee’s business website

Loom – to record quick videos of processes on your computer

Kajabi – online course platform

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