Outsourcing is a great way to scale your business easily and effectively. Oftentimes when small businesses grow, those owners unknowingly end up wearing a lot of “hats” in the business such as bookkeeper, SEO, website designer, copywriter, photo editor, social media manager, video producer, etc.
Balancing these “hats” is not always easy and a lot of times ends up with us dropping a few of those hats here and there. Why? Because often, there are not enough hours in the day. We end up picking and choosing what we can do and putting off what we can’t or don’t like to do.
How do you manage to stay on top of all the demands of running a business, without it running you ragged?
One word: outsource. It can be nearly impossible to scale a business without bringing on a team and or/ outsourcing. We can only do so much on our own before we hit our max. To scale and bring in more profit, we need to free up our time to do so. This is why outsourcing is so effective at scaling your business and scaling it quickly.
Three Steps to Get Started with Outsourcing
Step One: Take a week to carve out time to consciously pay attention to where you are spending the most time in your business. Start keeping a log of how long these tasks take and how often you have to do them. You can also do this with your personal life as well.
Step Two: Start to analyze if anything could be outsourced. Are there experts you could hire? (social media manager, SEO specialist, copywriter, or bookkeeper.)
Step Three: Calculate the Cost of Your Time. We often focus on the cost of outsourcing the task but we don’t talk about how much TIME it is costing us.
Time is something that we have only so much of and we can’t get back what we’ve used.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Are you trading time and saying yes to things that are causing you to say no to others?
- Are those no’s putting you in a position where you are missing out on deep personal connections with either family or friends?
- Are no’s holding you back from growing your business?
- Are your yeses giving you business burnout?
- Are your yeses stunting your creative flow and energy?
- Essentially, do you have your yeses and no’s mixed up or backward?
Don’t worry if you find yourself saying yes or no to the wrong things and feeling unbalanced in your business. This happens to most of us at some point and if we are being honest, more than one point. You are not alone.
Outsourcing can be scary for a variety of reasons. The biggest one being our inability to give up control.
We can easily fall into the trap of thinking we can do it best and that no one else will take care of it as we can. This just isn’t true…
As a private photo editor and running my team of photo editors, I see time and time again, this common question: “Can you do what I do? Can you edit the way I do?” That answer is a profound YES! This is what we do, day in and day out. It’s what we truly shine in and why we have been so successful at serving over 80+ wedding photographers and editing thousands upon thousands of images between us all.
The same rings true for you and your needs. Some experts will not only help take your huge tasks off of your plate, but they will probably do it better than you because it’s all they do and all they focus on.
Let’s say you are looking for a Pinterest manager. Wouldn’t you want someone who does this all the time and knows Pinterest like the back of their hand?
Do You Have a Business Where You Could Hire Another You?
Essentially they would rather just do the creative work and have someone else run the brand and business. This is personally how I’ve grown my business to serve over 80+ clients.
That wouldn’t be possible without my team of editors who love editing and serving our clients. They leave the business and brand stuff to me, which I love to do and they edit for our clients which they love. Win-win!
Budgeting is also a very important step into making outsourcing work for you and not against you. Let’s quickly touch on how to factor in the cost of outsourcing.
Four Ways to Budget for Outsourcing
- Increase pricing to include the cost of outsourcing: This is considered the cost of doing business and should be included in your overall pricing.
- Think about how much time you are freeing up: Does this open up the ability to take on more clients? If so, this will not only help you afford to outsource but will bring in more income for your business than if you hadn’t outsourced.
- Think of it this way, you are losing money by not outsourcing: Outsourcing is also deductible. So be sure to talk with your CPA and get more details on how you can deduct the cost of outsourcing.
- Think about the areas you are looking to outsource: There is going to be someone who does what you are looking for. You just need to know how to find your people.
How to Find the Right People to Outsource To
- Ask industry friends for referrals. The Rising Tide Society Facebook page is a great place to start. You could even search and see if it’s been asked before.
- Once you find a few worth looking at, check out their website. Take a look at their testimonials. Stalk them a little on social media. Set up a consult call with them.
All in all, do your due diligence when finding someone. After all, this is important because not everyone is going to be your perfect fit. Let me preface that once you do get the ball rolling and start outsourcing, don’t give up if it doesn’t go perfectly straight out the gate.
Don’t give up at the first sign of trouble and say all is lost. In the beginning, you are both getting to know each other and you are getting used to the new process.
Pro Tip: Remember we are all only human and it takes a small amount of time to be in sync with the person we are outsourcing to. There may be some hiccups at first, but trust in the process and give it a fair chance. It is worth it!
Outsourcing is POWERFUL and you will most likely wish you had done it sooner!
