When Outsourcing Will and Won’t Help Your Business

I love the idea of outsourcing. I hired my first contractor, not even a year after starting my business. At that time, I didn’t even know I had a business. I just knew I was making a little money online and wanted to increase my efforts.

Outsourcing can be great for your business if done correctly. Hiring others to help you in various areas can free up more of your time to focus on other areas of your business.

However, outsourcing can also be ineffective if you don’t do it right or try to start too early. In the post, we’ll go over the circumstances where outsourcing will and won’t help your business.

When to Outsource

You’re Spending Too Much Time on Tasks

Entrepreneurs wear various different hats in their business. One on end you have to strategize and plan everything out. On the other, you need to also do a sizeable amount of the work in the beginning.

You may find yourself being the content writer, social media marketer, PR person, and general staff member all in one. The problem with wearing so many hats is it’s time-consuming and can take you further from getting the results you want with your business.

Instead of being an entrepreneur, most business owners are simply technicians trying to make sure the day-to-day tasks get completed. If you want to scale up and bring your focus back to your goal, you can outsource some of your tasks to other to buy back your time.

You Don’t Like Performing Certain Tasks

The first thing I outsourced in my business was the creation of my graphics and social media management. I’m not crazy about social media and I don’t always keep up with the trending strategies or algorithm updates.

Since I run a blog, I know how important it is to have quality graphics on the site and use Pinterest to market blog posts. I had no interest in doing this so I hired someone to do it for me.

If I had tried doing it myself, I would have wasted a ton of time and grown to resent that side of my business.

You Need Help Implementing Proven Strategies

Outsourcing can seem like a risk sometimes because you have to pay someone to do something for you and you don’t always know what your ROI will be. This is why it’s best to slow down and outsource only tasks that have been proven to pay off.

How will you know this? Maybe it’s something you did in the past to get results but no longer have time for. Or, the person you’re hiring can have a proven track record with lots of referrals. If you’re hiring an expert, your business can benefit from their experience and everything they bring to the table.

You can also start working together on trial basis to see if things will be a good fit before you commit to something long-term. This could be a great way for you to measure the initial results you get when hiring someone for your team.

You Have a Clear Strategies For Your New Hire(s)

What do you wish to gain by outsourcing? Saying you want more time is a nice sentiment, but it’s too vague. What will outsourcing help you accomplish? And when do you plan to accomplish it.

It’s so important that you have clear goals so you can implement a clear strategy for your new hire(s). I see so many business owners who have a team and pay others to complete tasks simply because it’s a routine. They have no end goal for outsourcing and no idea what they want to use it to accomplish.

Ultimately, your team should be helping you build your business in a specific way.

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When Not to Outsource

You’re Not Really Saving Any Time

Do you have to check over every single thing that your team does or do you expect to do this? If outsourcing is still costing you lots of time and effort, it may not be worth it.

This may also be a red flag that you didn’t hire the right person. But if you’re very type-A and used to doing everything yourself, you may have a hard time successfully passing off tasks to other people and truly benefiting from it.

You’re Not Yet Making Any Money

I understand that often times you need to spend money to make money. That said, you do need to have some money at least before you consider outsourcing.

If you’re in debt or aren’t yet making a business income, you should try doing the bulk of the upfront work yourself first before hiring someone else. Without any income, it’s risky to hire someone and be able to consistently pay them.

You can also try quick ways to make money like freelancing so you can have a budget to work with. When you do start outsourcing, you want to remain in the positive as much as possible. This means your income should exceed your expenses.

You can have a deficit occasionally or even in the beginning stages, but it’s not normal to have one all the time.

You’re Handing Off Too Many Tasks?

Ever ran into that business owner who outsourced so many things that they often had no idea what was going on in their business? Don’t be that person. Handing off tasks to other people can seem awesome but it doesn’t help much if there are no systems in place.

You need checks and balances to make sure people have a clear role and that you are still the main decision maker. Handing off too many tasks to others and automation programs can make it difficult for you to measure your progress and ROI. Don’t be one of those people who spends way too much on services and team members but still gets no results.

Have you ever thought about outsourcing in your business? Do you think now is a good time? Why or why not?

Source: https://www.business2community.com
Image Credit: geralt / Pixabay

Theresa Todman, Managing Partner/CEO of B&M Financial Management Services, LLC . Theresa works with small business owners and entrepreneurs to assist them with financial management and creating organized systems and procedures. She specializes in bookkeeping, accounting, QuickBooks solutions, small business tax issues and consulting.

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