This was a real drag on my time and I found myself working harder and for longer hours than I would have preferred to. However, due to a lack of focus, the business wasnt growing.

I later learnt that this was not the best way to run a successful business. By doing everything myself, I was actually hurting the business. I was focusing on menial jobs and not the most important job of all - that of growing the business.

I then began to outsource and the business benefited significantly as I was spending my time as a business owner and not as an employee.

Some of the things a property investor can outsource are:

- Property maintenance: anything including painting the walls, changing washers and the gardening can be outsourced.

The cheapest way to handle property maintenance is by finding a good odd job man. This is basically someone who has skills to complete most of the general maintenance tasks around the house.

For specialist jobs such as roofing and electrics, you can outsource to professional tradesmen.

- Finding tenants: this can be outsourced to a letting agent.

By outsourcing the tenant finding you will save yourself a lot of time as you will no longer need to organise property viewings, interview tenants, apply for references etc

- Handling calls and general administration

If you are not able to afford a full time assistant, you can hire someone part time to handle any business enquiries.

An alternative to using a traditional assistant is to hire a virtual assistant. This is a great cheap alternative as you only pay for the virtual assistant's time on your jobs, rather than a fixed income per week.

A virtual assistant can not only handle your phone calls, but can also be used for general secretarial tasks including answering your emails.

You can find a Virtual Assistant by for example, doing a Google search and choosing a firm that you can work with.

The only job I would recommend you dont outsource immediately is that of property sourcing.

Finding your investment property at the right price is the primary role of a property investor. If you were to outsource this, you could be in danger of losing your business.

However, you can still use property finders to source properties but this would be to supplement your activities in this area, not to replace them.

Your business will only grow if you focus on it on a daily basis. Leave the subsidiary tasks to the specialists as your time is certainly worth more than the 10 pound an hour you would pay a painter and decorator.

You should aim to develop your property business into a fully automated system. This way, you can remove yourself from the business and the business would still continue to run without you, on autopilot.