These were the words that fell out of my mouth when I attended one of our regular breakfast networking groups.
This was after speaking to a successful business owner, a beauty aesthetics clinic, who was explaining her dilemma that, with all the day to day running of her salon and client follow ups, she was really struggling to get her marketing done to attract new clients and promote her business.
Like many business owners she was finding herself working longer hours, having less time with her kids and partner and being unable to get the work-life balance she had set out to achieve by becoming self-employed.
She was finding that her evenings were now taken up by trying to get to grips with Facebook, replying to customer messages on Twitter and trying to somehow edit her photos to look half decent to upload and promote on Instagram. Not to mention mailing her existing client base about the new exciting services she was offering.
I stood there and listened to her, let her offload her problem and then very calmly said to her, ‘I can see this is really stressing you out. But you CAN get that task done and much more, and the solution is very simple and very cost effective.’
When you outsource, a little bit of magic happens. By getting rid of the tasks that are a time suck could find yourself with up to an additional 10+ hours a week. Imagine that 10 hours extra a week could look like; go networking, finish a few hours early, spend more time with the kids, focus on a business idea you’ve been working on.
The top reason for outsourcing (59%) is to save money and cut costs. (Deloitte)
What’s more, according to Deloitte’s outsourcing statistics graphs, the second-most reason is to focus on core business functions (57%). Additionally, solving business-related capacity issues takes third place with 47%.
There’s so much you could achieve just by making one quick enquiry which will add so much worth to your business.
Working out what to outsource
Some of the typical things that we might do for you are:
General office administration
Social media management
Website design and maintenance
Blogging and content creation
Marketing material design
Creating and sending of email newsletters
Data management
CRM setup and maintenance
Implementing workflows
These are just some of the tasks that we do for our clients. If you’re thinking of outsourcing to a business support specialist or looking for help with your business tasks, here's a simple exercise that you can do to identify the tasks in your business you could delegate.
Write down everything you do over the course of a week
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, creating two columns. In the left column write down the things that ONLY you can do and in the right column you list everything else - these will most likely be tasks that you dislike doing, that are eating up your time, are laborious or repetitive and you may lack the skills to do. Done! Now you have a list of tasks you can (and should) outsource.
If you still need convincing if outsourcing makes sense, add the time you spend on each task from the right column and multiply this with your hourly rate. Would that time be more effective for your business if you were to invest it on the tasks in the left column?
Ultimately outsourcing makes your business more profitable and you more productive, because you are no longer stretched across so many areas. Whether you need to outsource for a fixed time period or short contract, many providers offer flexible solutions to suit any business.
Outsourcing can also bring fresh minds to your business to help you innovate and get ahead of the competition.