Have you thought about outsourcing for your biz? If so, today’s post is for you.
I’ve mentioned this another podcast before, but your first hire does not have to be full-time. And hiring can seem so overwhelming to so many entrepreneurs who are going at it alone. I remember being at the cheer gym and training one of the cheer moms. She was an entrepreneur, and a very successful one at that. She would always talk about the beauty that comes with hiring people. And I always told her that I just wanted to go it alone. I never wanted to hire or manage people. Which is still the case. I have one right hand woman. But I also have several contractors that I pay to do certain tasks in my business. We called this outsourcing.
Outsourcing is not having an assistant or other coaches underneath you.
By definition from Oxford Languages, outsourcing is
• contract (work) out or abroad.”you may choose to outsource this function to another company or do it yourself”
This is different than hiring an employee.
I like to think about this as one off tasks, or specific duties within your business that someone else can do, that you are not required for. Your goal in business should always be to move closer and closer to the spot where you are only doing the tasks within your business that demand you to do them, or task that you personally enjoy doing, and are fulfilling to you. So, even if someone else could do the task, you enjoy it, and there’s no current downside of you doing it.
I think about things like formatting emails for you, or doing design work, or editing a piece of media for you. Someone on boarding your clients if it doesn’t need to be you. There’s lots of different tasks that we can outsource in business depending on the business model that you have
How do you know when it’s time to outsource?
Some people begin outsourcing very early on in business. Others wait 5 to 7 years to outsource. There is no one-size-fits-all equation for this. But I hope that I can give you some questions to ask yourself in order to determine if it might be a good time for you to pay for someone to do something in your business for you. This, either frees up time for you to do more in your business or just frees off time PERIOD.
Oh, my first answer is just before or when you hit your ceiling. I waited to the point of being at my ceiling to hire. And I should’ve hired just before that. So I was busting at my seams before I brought someone on to help me. I had reached the point where I literally did not have a single extra second in the day to grow my business. I was just trying to take care of all of the tasks in my business that keep it going. I do not suggest waiting to this point to hire help. Because when you do hire, you may need to have time to create systems for a person to follow, or loom videos, and trainings for that person. And that requires time from you as well. Again, that depends on what task your outsourcing. But it’s something to keep in mind.
Do you feel like you are starting to reach your maximum with your client load, or just the task that you have to complete within your business?
If you feel like you are approaching that, then I want you to determine what tasks you might be able to outsource. Ideally, these are tasks that are either very time demanding for you, or task that you don’t enjoy doing, and or you are bad at. These are the categories we want to outsource first.
You might also go down the route of outsourcing for whatever new thing you are wanting to create. So if your business is for one on one capacity and you still want to take care of all of those one-on-one clients, but you want to build out some kind of other offer in order to scale, Then, perhaps you bring someone on or outsource different tasks involved in creating and bringing that new offer to life. For instance, I brought on a funnel specialist to help me build out my FitsPRO Foundations funnel. Because I did not have the time to do the research on my own. It was worth paying someone to just brainstorm with me and tell me what I need to do from the creation standpoint, but then have them actually bring it to life.
That’s the first thing I would do. Look at how full you are right now. And make moves before you’re busting at the seams.
The other question you can ask, is, do you want to be doing some thing in your business that you are not simply because there’s one task that is very overwhelming for you?
The barrier to entry just feels too high and so you are not doing whatever task that is. I had a one on one business client who wanted to build out her email list. But formatting the emails literally felt so overwhelming to her and she hated it so much that it was stopping her from creating and nurturing an email list. So she hired, and outsourced that task. And then was able to start and continue building her email list. I believe she paid $100 per email, she was sending 2 to 4 per month. Which for her was absolutely worth it. So the second thing I want you to consider when choosing whether or not it’s a good time to outsource, is seeing if there is resistance with a certain area of your business. An area of resistance that continuously comes up, and stops you from taking action where you want to be taking action. Is it possible to outsource a piece of that?
I want you to notice that this has nothing to do with how many years you’ve been in business. And I just want to drive that home. Because I do think there’s a misconception about being in business for a certain amount of years before you outsource. Or how soon you should be outsourcing. And there’s just not a lot of truth to that. It’s much more circumstantial.
The last thing I will say is budget. Do you have the bandwidth to outsource? Because you are going to have to pay someone for that. What is your budget, do some research to see what common rates are for the different tasks that you need in your business. Determine what you want to spend. What would be worth it to you. And remember that you can always stop outsourcing whatever it is that you’ve started. You’re not married to whatever you start outsourcing.
Those are my answers. When it’s in your budget to outsource, if it’s a task that you tend to have resistance towards repeatedly in your business, and that resistance is preventing you from making the progress that you want, and if you would like to create something new, and or you can see that you’re going to start busting at your seems very soon, and that will prevent you from having the time to continue growing or making changes in your business.
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