Trying to do it all myself as a business owner cost me an estimated $10,000 - here's what I did wrong

One faulty way I tried to save money was by ignoring other's advice to hire a lawyer or seek legal help. Instead, I created contracts and negotiated deals on my own. I have no legal background, and trying to be my own lawyer resulted in me signing contracts that weren't in my favor and spending more money, years later, to get out of them.

While in the moment I saved money not hiring a lawyer, I ended up having to spend thousands of dollars later to fix those mistakes.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made — leaning into the fact that I didn't delegate or hire anyone to help with my business in the early days — was that I didn't put a dollar value on my time. When I was working over 90 hours a week, I didn't understand how much money I was losing doing the work myself.

If I had put an hourly rate on my time, say of $150 an hour, that would have been $13,500 that I should have been paying myself weekly to do that work. If I had valued myself in that way, then I could have justified hiring a part-time assistant or even a handful of freelancers to help me with the things that ate up too much of my time, like social media or PR, and use my time instead to move the business forward

When other entrepreneurs ask me for advice, I keep it simple: Value your time, and don't be afraid to hire people to help you. If I did that, I would have saved over $10,000, and a whole world of stress.

Now, whenever I feel overwhelmed with my to-do list or notice that I'm working more hours a week than sleeping, I press the pause button and see what I can change. Five years into running a business means I can't afford to make this mistake again.