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As a small business owner you will soon realize, if you haven't already, there are not enough hours in the day for all the projects you could be working on. The solution: delegate work to independent contractors.

Delegating work helps you maintain balance in your business and your personal life. It also means that:

• You don't have need to have the skills necessary to complete every task your clients — or potential clients — need.
• You can focus on administrative details also need to be taken care of so your business can thrive. These tasks include sales, marketing, networking, following up with potential clients…
• You don't have to turn away clients when your project calendar fills up, send clients to a colleague or miss billing clients, or have a backlog of e-mails you haven't responded to.
• Or, if you are working on your business part time, or with a family, you find you can't juggle the multiple tasks of caring for a home and kids as well as dealing with the needs of a bigger baby — your business.

Here's how getting an independent contractor to work for you can not only save you money, but also time.

Make money by increasing your workload

By delegating work to independent contractors, you can increase your workload exponentially. For example, let's say you schedule twenty hours of work in one week for two clients. If you hire a contractor, you can schedule in two more clients for another twenty hours of work that week. You get more work done, and earn more income.

Create profit

If you find an independent contractor who charges less than what the client is paying, you still make a profit on those extra hours, even though you did not do the work yourself. You serve as a project manager, quality control officer and client liaison. In other words, you hand out assignments, inspect the work to make sure it's up to standards and liaise between the client and the subcontractor. Another bonus? Neither needs to know the other exists.

Save money and time: you don't have to learn new skills

An entrepreneur should know a little about a lot, but it's impossible to be a master at everything. Think of all you'd have to learn: website design, copywriting, blogging, bookkeeping, e-mail marketing — not to mention all the software you'd have to learn with each skill! Find out the basics of what you need to know, then delegate the work to a contractor. You'll save the money and time you'd have spent on training and have the work done quicker.

Independent contractors mean less paperwork Independent contractors also come with a special set of benefits that you don't get from hiring employees. A contractor comes with her own office, her own equipment and her own training. She often is running her own service business and therefore has a stake in making a good name for herself — and for you. The subcontractor is also responsible for her own taxes, sets her own hours and is usually self-motivated. You only pay her for the actual work she does.

You also avoid paperwork and effort of dealing with hiring, managing, payroll, taxes, motivation. With a contractor, you only pay for the work done.

On the other hand, an employee needs space in your office and you need to provide her with equipment and training. While there are good employees available, you could easily end up with someone who simply wants a paycheck, regardless of whether or not she worked for it. You would also need to set her hours and pay her for the hours she is "on the clock" even if she's reading a book half the time. In other words, if there is no work, you still have to pay the employee. And then there is the whole business of withholding taxes and Social Security and other paperwork that goes along with employing someone.

Delegating work to an independent contractor saves you money and time. It is also an efficient way to manage your business efficiently and bring more balance into your business and personal life.

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