When Too Much of the Business Lands on One Person

Recently, I spoke with a key player of an eight-person training business who was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work they were carrying.

The business looked well set up on paper: a trained specialist team of eight delivered the courses, and an external bookkeeper handled the day-to-day accounts. But client inquiries, sales proposals, scheduling, course administration and operational coordination all fell to this one person, who also had to deliver training.

They were so exhausted they had stopped recording their own working hours. They weren’t managing the business anymore; they were just surviving the week.

There was clear demand to expand, but the person holding everything together had zero capacity left.

Sharing the work was the goal, but they didn’t have the energy to work out what to handover and how to start that process.

How Does One Person End Up Doing Everything?

In small businesses, this rarely happens by design. It happens by habit.

An administrative or operational task needs doing, so the owner or manager steps in because they know how to do it quickly. Because they handle it once, the rest of the team continues to expect them to handle it.

Over time, more tasks land on their desk. While the delivery team gets on with its work, the same individual is left holding everything together: organising, communicating with clients and providing administrative support.

The person I spoke with had been told, “You just need to delegate.” What they hadn't been given was help with what to hand over, who could take it on, or how and when to start.

Telling an exhausted person to delegate is unhelpful unless they also get help preparing the handover. Without that preparation, the work can come bouncing back to their desk, leaving them more frustrated than before.

If you find yourself holding up the weight of an entire operation, here are five questions worth asking to safely transition that workload off your plate.

1. What work is landing on you?

When you are underwater, it is difficult to explain everything you do in a day. The work becomes a blur of micro-tasks and constant interruptions.

We suggested that this key person make notes of their daily activities for a short period, enough time to capture everything they do in a week. Keeping a real-time log makes the invisible work visible. Once written down, you can group individual tasks into clear operational categories, for example: proposal creation and follow up, course scheduling, customer support, invoicing and financial oversight.

Ask yourself: How much time does each area take every week? What specific skills are required to do them?

Until you know what the work involves, it is difficult to decide how to share it.

2. Does all that work still need to be done?

Before you hand a task over to someone else, ask why it is being done in the first place.

What benefit does it create? Where does it fit into your customer journey and service process? Is it duplicated anywhere else, or has it simply become an obsolete habit?

Some steps add administrative time without providing a clear benefit to the client or the business. Where tasks are unnecessary or duplicated, they can be combined, simplified or automated using software systems you may already pay for. The goal is to streamline the workload first, rather than make someone else busy doing unnecessary work.

3. Who could take responsibility—and what do you expect?

Is there someone on your existing team with the skills, time, and interest to step up? Could an existing staff member take on more operational responsibility with some targeted training? Or do you need to hire administrative support from outside?

Before engaging anyone, you must define exactly what you expect them to deliver. Someone saying, "I have years of admin experience," does not guarantee they will deliver what your specific business needs.

Before the handover, agree on what needs to be delivered, how often and to what standard. Unclear expectations can lead to delegated or outsourced work falling short, leaving owners frustrated and taking the tasks back. Measurable standards help reduce that risk; they don't remove it altogether.

4. What do the numbers tell us?

"I can't afford to hire someone," is a common concern. But have you tested the math?

If you freed up 10 or 15 hours of your time each week, how much additional revenue could the business realistically generate? Start with the work those hours would make possible, such as business development or delivering higher-value services, then estimate the revenue it could bring in.

Compare what those freed-up hours could realistically contribute with the cost of having someone else do the work, whether that's an existing team member or someone hired from outside. Dividing potential additional revenue by the hours involved gives you a revenue-per-hour estimate, but revenue alone doesn't show whether the change will pay for itself.

Even if immediate extra revenue isn't guaranteed, relying indefinitely on an exhausted key person puts the entire business at risk.

5. How will you know the work is being done properly?

A successful handover requires structured training, clear expectations, and structured feedback.

Initially, you will need to review the output and mentor the person so they understand what a good result looks like. Regular weekly checkpoints allow both of you to review progress, correct minor errors early, and identify where extra support is needed.

As their capability grows, you can ease off the detailed checking and use regular reports to keep sight of progress. That lets you stay informed without managing every detail.

What Would Better Look Like?

With clear responsibilities, the skills to do the work and the authority to make decisions within their roles, people can take responsibility for day-to-day tasks. The owner or manager can then keep sight of the business without having to sort out every issue.

Getting there takes deliberate effort, but you don't have to fix everything at once. Start small: identify one recurring task this week that does not require your personal touch, and outline what a proper handover would look like.

If too much of your business is currently landing on your shoulders, you are welcome to a complimentary 20-minute discussion. We can explore where your time is going, clarify what needs immediate attention, and map out a practical path forward.

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Towards Growth is a strategic business advisory and mentoring practice.

The ideas, insights and client stories we share come from our own work and practical experience, with AI used for editorial support.

The Revenue-to-Value Model™ is a proprietary framework of Towards Growth.