Small Business Admin is Valid Work
There was a time when Toni and I shared the one big room and we could always see what each other was doing as we worked. But since we moved to our new place in June last year we have worked in two separate rooms so it can be hard to know just what the other person is doing.
Yesterday it wasn’t hard to see or hear what I was doing. I was digging through some boxes that had been packed at the old place and not yet unpacked because I needed to find our video camera and and the battery charger for it. (We’ve decided to have a little play with some video advertising on a couple of our sites just as an experiment and probably because I’ve become a bit bored doing the same thing day after day.)
But Toni was her usual quiet self and I wondered what she had been up to for most of the day.
When I asked her she lamented the fact that she hadn’t achieved anything. Instead she had emailed some of our writers - paid all their accounts for the week - set up some links to an online jewellery story we’ve just started - talked to a couple of clients and picked up some new work - but she felt she hadn’t achieved anything.
Sheesh - sometimes you just have to realise that time spent doing admin type work for a small business is every bet as valuable as producing whatever it is that you produce.
I really had to impress that on her … because I didn’t want to admit that I had spent all day looking for a battery charger that I didn’t find 
April 30th, 2006 at 11:32 am
After reading your post, I just had to leave a comment. You are 100% correct in stating that there is real value in doing the administrative tasks that come along with running a small business. That’s what keeps things chugging along. Good luck to you guys!
April 30th, 2006 at 11:41 am
G’day Bill
Yep - your point is very valid. If Toni hadn’t done all that admin work the business wouldn’t be chugging along next week.
While it may be hard to quantify that work in dollar terms at the end of each day it is still vital for the success of any small business.
BTW - I liked the story about Alibaba in your blog. Winston Churchill was a truly remarkable man - even more remarkable than many might think because there was a man who was dogged by depression for much of his life and yet he achieved so much.