Are you really ready to outsource?
When you’re snowed under with a hundred different projects, juggling a hundred different tasks, and trying to keep your sanity in tact too, the thought of outsourcing to a VA or an OBM (a cute little acronym for the best people alive*, Online Business Managers) or quite literally anyone who can take some of the pressure off your plate sounds like a DREAM.
*not really, I’m just very biased
If you’re earning enough money to afford it, why wouldn’t you want to hand off some of the things you hate doing to someone else?
It’s a tempting option. And, as a completely (un)biased OBM, I wholeheartedly believe that outsourcing can be the making of your business - BUT it shouldn’t be a snap decision.
It’s a BIG DEAL to hand over parts of your business (your baby) to someone else. Even if that person is the best person in the entire world (hi, me), you and your business need to be ready too.
3 signs that it might be time to outsource
Figuring out that it’s the right time to start outsourcing isn’t an exact science, but it’s not just a gut feeling either. It’s a combination of the two - a moment in your business when things align in just the right way to make you feel at least partly confident in hiring someone to support you.
So, if you can nod along emphatically to these three things, it might be time to outsource.
(But keep reading to make sure you’ve got everything in place before you take the plunge!)
Sign #1: you’re feeling overworked, overwhelmed and burnt the heck out
This is the biggy. When your business starts feeling like a burden that you just can’t tolerate anymore, it might be time to outsource.
Burnout’s a tricky thing to avoid as a business owner, and the chances are that everyone will experience some form of it at some point in their biz journey - but if you’re feeling constantly on the edge of burnout because you just have far too much to do in far too little time, it’s time to start considering your priorities.
It might be that something relatively simple like a shiny new piece of technology (hello, Dubsado) could alleviate a lot of the burden you’re feeling. But if your processes and systems are all running smoothly and you’re still feeling stressed AF, your business might just have grown to be too big for one person to (sanely) handle.
Sign #2: you’re behind on deadlines
Yep, the dreaded d-word.
If you’re finding that your timelines for projects are getting longer and longer and you’re often having to shift deadlines back even further than anticipated, it might be time to outsource.
As a creative business owner in particular, the last thing you want to do is produce work that isn’t your absolute best - but when you’re rushed and under time pressure and trying to juggle so many things that come along with running a business, that nightmare often becomes a reality.
If the demand for your amazingness is far outpacing your capacity as a one-person-band, outsourcing your least favourite, most time-consuming tasks might just be the answer.
Sign #3: it makes financial sense
At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious - can you actually afford to outsource?
This is the biggy for most people. Especially for creative business owners who’ve always done things entirely on their own, taking the leap into outsourcing often comes with sheer financial terror.
Even when the tipping point arrives, where your revenue is big enough and stable enough to support outsourcing, it still feels terrifying to dedicate a chunk of that hard-earned revenue to outsourcing - but how about you flip that narrative on its head? Sure, you’re spending money - but what are you getting in return? Aside from the time and space to actually breathe again, you’re opening up opportunities for more revenue in your business too.
If you’re bringing enough in and can see how outsourcing could translate into bringing even more in, you might be ready to outsource.
Okay, but what do you need to consider before taking the outsourcing plunge?
Let’s say you’re in the position where you feel sort of ready to outsource some parts of your business. You’re feeling burnt out, you’re missing deadlines, and you’re bringing in enough revenue to support outsourcing.
You’re ready, right? Let’s start googling ‘online business managers’ and get that started!
Um, pause. Because even if you are ticking every single one of those boxes, you still might not be quite ready to outsource. Not because you don’t want to or don’t need to, but because your business isn’t quite in a state where outsourcing will really benefit you.
Before you take the plunge, your business needs a little bit of tidying up so that you can absolutely get the most from hiring a business manager or a social media manager or a copywriter or a virtual assistant or anyone else you’re thinking about hiring - so that whoever is giving you a helping hand has everything they need to make your business GROW.
So let’s take a look at the three most important things to think about before outsourcing for the first time…
What are your goals when outsourcing?
Getting really damn clear on why you’re outsourcing is 100% the most important thing you can do to prepare for your first hire.
If you have no clear idea of the purpose of outsourcing, a) you’ll have no idea what you’re looking for from your business support, and b) you’ll have no idea whether your outsourcing is actually working.
Let’s take a pretty standard example. You’re a wedding photographer. You work upwards of 30 weekends of the year, shooting amazingly beautiful photos of people’s special days. And you spend your weekdays editing, booking in shoots, improving your skills, marketing your business, handling admin, and trying to maintain some sort of work-life balance too (which is extra tough, given that your weekends aren’t yours half the time!). You decide to hire a VA and a photo editor to help you handle the BTS running of your business and speed up the editing process.
If the goals of outsourcing were to improve turnaround time from shoot to delivery and help you handle incoming enquiries, you’re set. Good job.
But if your goals were to take back your weekends while still growing your revenue, your outsourcing decisions aren’t quite achieving that… Sure, you’re getting time back during the week, but you’re still the only photographer for weekend weddings.
That’s why getting crystal clear on what you want your business to look like before you even think about outsourcing is so important. You might be ticking all of the ‘I’m ready to outsource’ boxes - but if you outsource the wrong things, you won’t make any progress towards a business that actually works for you.
SOPs, processes, systems, guidelines - have you got any?!
This is the one that trips most business owners over, particularly if you’ve been a one-person-band up until now.
You know your business inside out (I hope). You know what to do when someone enquires. You know how to raise an invoice. You know how to communicate with clients. You know how to ask for feedback. You know your pricing, your onboarding, your everything.
But if all that stuff is in your head and nowhere else, what happens when you bring someone else on board to help with your business?
One of two things will happen:
You’ll spend HOURS, if not weeks, writing out everything you know into the world’s biggest Google Doc to “handover” to whoever you’re outsourcing work to. And they’ll scan through it, absorb some of it, and still have a million questions to ask you.
The work you outsource won’t be done in the way it should be done for your brand. Your enquiries won’t be handled in the way you want them handled. Your pricing will be misquoted. Invoices will be issued with the wrong details. Things just won’t work properly.
So what’s the solution to this madness?!
Easy. SOPs.
“Harriet, have you finally lost your marbles? That’s not a word…”
Ah, but it is. SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. Which still sounds made up, but it’s essentially a document that outlines every procedure, process, system or workflow in your business.
Standard, because they’re the same every time. Operating, because they deal with operational things in your biz. And Procedure, because they’re a process that happens regularly. Put the S, the O and the P together and you’ve got Standard Operating Procedures, aka LIFE SAVERS.
You could have an SOP for a new enquiry. It would probably include things like how quickly to follow up with an enquiry, templates to reply to enquiries with, timelines for when (and how) to follow up with enquiries after initial contact has been made.
And then if that enquiry turns into a client, there’ll be an onboarding SOP too - that outlines every stage of the onboarding process, from contracts to invoices to client portals to everything.
(Spoiler: ya’know what also does all these things for you without lifting a finger?! Dubsado!)
SOPs are basically guidelines for you and whoever else is working in your business. They set out what happens when, and maaaan they make your outsourcing-efforts SO much easier. Imagine being able to hire a VA or a photo editor or a social media manager and just giving them the SOPs they need to know about and letting them crack on?! Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
What’s my Zone of Genius?
AKA, what do I want to keep hold of, because I’m really damn good at it?!
At the end of the day, your clients come to you for a reason - because you’re great. If you start outsourcing every part of your business, including every element of your client work, you’re moving towards an agency model - and that might be exactly what you want, but it also might not be…
If you’re keen to keep doing the work you love, you need to figure out which parts of your business life are in your Zone of Genius. You need to find those tasks that:
Light you the heck up
You’re AMAZING at
Generate the most return on your energetic investment.
Yep, you need to find your Zone of Genius. The things you do better than anyone else. The things you love doing. And the things that actually drive your business forward.
If you’re a wedding photographer again, it might be that you actually love the editing process - but you find the wedding shoots themselves tough. Could you hire a second shooter for the weddings to take the pressure off you a little? Or could you outsource your marketing instead?
If you’re a coach, I imagine that the thing you adore more than anything else in the world is actually coaching clients. So for you, could you outsource the invoicing, the marketing, the podcast editing - all those things that take you longer than someone else and don’t light you up?
The things that always end up on the bottom of your to do list are a good place to start when you’re thinking about outsourcing - but knowing exactly where your Zone of Genius is will make sure you keep the bits of your business that bring you joy (and earn you money!).
So, are you really ready to outsource?
There we have it: the signs that you might be ready to outsource, and the things you need to consider before you take the leap.
If you’re still feeling pretty good about the idea of outsourcing, YAY! You’re probably ready! Figure out what you’re looking for and go get it!
If you’re not quite sure if you’re quuuuuite there yet, that’s okay too! There are no templates for running your business - you need to do things at your own pace in order for them to be sustainable for you.
If you’re fairly sure you’re ready, but you need a little nudge in the right direction or a helping hand with creating SOPs or just a reassuring chat to get clear on things - you need a Clarity Session!
These are 90-minute sessions with me to chat about anything you’re struggling with - but if it’s outsourcing you need support with, we can really dig deep into whether you’re ready to outsource, what you need to put in place before you bring someone into your business, and how to outsource in a way that doesn’t scare the living daylights out of you.
[button] Book your Clarity Session 💫
AND if you know you’re definitely ready to outsource and you know you definitely need an OBM, I’m your gal! I can be your Right Hand Woman, overseeing everything from systems and tech to team management and onboarding processes - in the words of a happy client, it’s “wonderful and completely worthwhile”.