Holding onto everything yourself and doing everything in-house is a fight that business owners have every day with themselves. However, the truth is that you – and your employees on hand – are limited beings, and if you aren’t devoting yourselves to the most worthy, expensive tasks, then you’re wasting a lot of time, money, and potential. For example, if you’re doing a task that you can outsource for $15 an hour, and your hourly is $50 an hour, that’s $35 an hour that you’re losing. Two hours of that and you’re down $70. What could you buy with $70? How about $140? A lot, that’s what, especially if that’s per day.
While it can be hard to let it go, it’s also necessary for success. You are the king of the castle, and kings rarely do the knight’s job, handmaiden’s job, and cook’s job too – they outsource all of that, and so should you. Here are three things that you can start with to get the ball rolling.
Things You Hate Doing
Occasionally, we must do a task that we dislike as business owners. Maybe it’s balancing the books, having important check-in meetings with our employees, or dealing with difficult customers that our employees just couldn’t handle. Other than a few select things, however, you should be able to outsource the vast, vast majority of other tasks that are just headaches for you. Think of the one thing you dread doing, but you do anyway. Is it receivables? Is it filing paperwork? Is it scheduling appointments? These are all things that can be handed to someone else for a relatively low cost.
Social Media
Social media is quite tedious to a lot of people, especially since while it’s easy to use, there’s a steep learning curve for figuring out how to develop a following, maintain that following, and build a brand on social media. It can take hours a week, and luckily, a social media manager is built to do this kind of thing for you. It’s a worthy thing to outsource, especially if you aren’t too savvy with all of the social media websites you need to be using.
Content Writing
We’re not all writers, and we should leave writing that’s compelling, comprehensive, and interesting to those who are. We should do some of the writing as we do have a unique perspective as experts in our fields, but most other content can be written and copyedited by someone else. This helps both the business owner and writers who enjoy writing for different niches, and most content writers aren’t particularly expensive. They are well worth what they do cost, too, especially since many of them know how to optimize content and make it appealing to search engines, which means higher rankings for you.
All in all, it’s okay to outsource sometimes, especially when it’s something you can’t do or hate doing. Make sure you choose a quality person or company for outsourcing, and then focus on the things that pay the big bucks.
