I’m excited to dive into Part Two of The One Woman Show Series, all about what to outsource in your business. I’m going to give you some simple steps to take and practical examples that will help you brainstorm what to outsource in your business and how to know when you’re ready.

Last week we talked about outsourcing at home and how simple it can really be to free your time, energy, and mental head space by getting support from your family and outsourcing simple things like grocery shopping and house cleaning. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, you can give it a listen here.

It is my hope that I can ease some of the hesitation you may be feeling surrounding spending more money. And why it may be true that you can do it all, it doesn’t mean that you should.

Remember, you don’t have to have a team to start outsourcing. You can start with apps and programs, move your way up to hiring contractors, and then eventually one day hire full time employees. So, for the purpose of today’s post, I’m focusing on just those first two. Let’s jump in!

1. List All Your Tasks + Rate Them

The first step is to list out all of your tasks. Yes, this can seem daunting, but it’s so important that you do this. Write down absolutely everything that you do in your business and then rate it on a scale from one to four.

One represents those busy work tasks. You’re not really making money during this time, but it’s necessary to do these things. Examples of this would include data entry, emails, copy and pasting things, onboarding your clients, gathering testimonials.

For me, one of those things is repurposing my podcast content. I share my content in several different places: on my email list, Pinterest, Instagram, and my show notes. Eventually I will hand this task off to someone else, but as of right now I take care of it and I have a really good system in which I make that happen.

Two represents tasks that you dread doing. Rate a number two next to any task where you are not in your zone of genius.

I actually dread writing out my email newsletters; It doesn’t seem like it should take that long, especially because I already have the show notes written and I have my outline. But for some reason, crafting it into a pretty polished email is something that I have a hard time with. I will hand this off in the future as well.

Three Represents tasks that you are good at and enjoy doing. Personally, I really enjoy designing my own website and doing my own graphics. Additionally, I like to plan my own content on Instagram and do all of the strategy and planning and goal projections. This task I have outsourced to my sister, who is my social media assistant. She also helps me to create the content for my Instagram page, for both my photo booth and photography businesses. In addition to this, she helps me manage The Purpose Gathering Community as well as assisting me in developing content ideas for this page.

Four are tasks that only you can do when you are in your zone of genius. These represent tasks like your client work, the CEO tasks that were discussed in Episode 28. For a reminder of those tasks, check out the episode here.

So, having made your master list of all the tasks and then rating them on a scale from one to four, I want you to think about the items on that list that could be outsourced with an app or a program.

2. Outsource with Apps + Programs

As you reflect on those tasks that can be outsourced, consider these questions below:

• Do you have any email templates that you can create to cut down on some of that time spent on emailing your clients?

• Are there certain processes you can put into place to make these tasks easier and duplicatable?

• Are there any programs that would help free up some of your time that you’re spending on busy work?

• What about booking or scheduling apps like Calendly or Acuity?

• What about a Client Relationship Management (CRM) Software service?

If you are finding that booking and scheduling is time consuming and difficult for you, having a scheduling app such as Calendly or Acuity can be a huge game changer in your business. The CRM service that I use and talk about a lot is HoneyBook. It is an amazing all in one platform for service-based businesses, where you can send contracts, do invoices, payments and more. It has just absolutely everything that you could possibly need, including a scheduling component.

Also think about your social media planning and scheduling apps, like Planoly or Tailwind for Pinterest. Planoly I use for my Instagram scheduling for all three of my businesses. I use the paid version because I have so many businesses that I want the flexibility to be able to switch between them. However, there is a free version that allows up to 30 photo uploads a month and it’s a good option if you’re just getting started.

It is important that you have an email list for your business, and so an email marketing platform would be useful. My favorite email marketing platform is Flodesk and it is extremely user friendly and absolutely beautiful. I also want to mention QuickBooks for accounting is another great business app and then also your website platform. I use Show It as my website platform as it has your hosting included in it. I pay a monthly subscription fee for Show It and they have an incredible customer support team that is always available to help me.

If you’re interested in checking out the apps that I have mentioned above, you can access them here and get a discount using my affiliate link to get 50% off your first-year subscription for HoneyBook.

3. Outsource with Contractors

Remember I mentioned above that you do not have to have a team to start outsourcing, you can hire contractors. So essentially a contractor is someone that you just pay per job or per hour as needed.

I have slowly built up my team and currently have four contractors working for me. I have a Pinterest virtual assistant who does everything for me on Pinterest. Then my husband Travis is my podcast editor where he does all of the editing for my podcasts, and uploads the episodes and show notes to Podbean, where I host my show. I also have a transcriber who does all of my show transcripts and then condenses it into a shortened version for my blog post. So that anyone can go onto the blog and take a quick peek at everything that’s available in the episode. And then as I mentioned, I have my sister who is my social media assistant and she just helps me with miscellaneous tasks that I need done. I want to take my sister on full time in January, and so, I’m currently saving three months of her monthly salary before I have her start, because I want to have that buffer.

So, I definitely think it’s a good place for everyone to start with their first hire as a virtual assistant. This person can be an extension of you, and they can take care of all of those busy work tasks that you have going on. There are a couple of really great places to find a virtual assistant; you can find one on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and even posting on Facebook and Instagram for personal recommendations.

One you outsource as many of these work tasks to a virtual assistant or contractor, you can now focus your time on your client work and the high-level CEO strategy tasks. This is going
to free up so much of your time, and you’re going to start to see a shift in your business. You will have more time to think about strategy and the next step in your business.

So here are some steps for you to take when you are deciding if you’re ready to hire a VA or a contractor.
Think about the specific tasks your new hire will be helping you with and spend some time to compile a list of these tasks. Assess whether this task is something that you should be doing or is this something that could be taught to someone else for them to do it. Don’t just hire a VA and try to figure out things as you go along as this wastes time and money.
Before hiring, find out the hourly rate for a VA or contractor and begin to save up two to three months of their salary to set aside in a savings account as a buffer.
Outline the processes and various steps that you go through that you want to teach your VA or contractor. Take a screen recording of you doing these tasks with you walking them through it and create a library of tutorials for them to follow.

This is going to be really helpful when you do hire that VA or new hire as you already have everything that they need to have a seamless transition.

I also recommend setting a budget every month and then having that hire stay within the allotted number of hours that corresponds with your budget. Instead of using them as needed and just racking up a huge bill at the end of the month, Now, of course, there are other contractors that you can hire such as a social media assistant, a marketing assistant and design assistant who can help you create graphics for your brand to share on Instagram.

So, in summarizing, there are so many options out there, you just need to start thinking about those areas in which you could start outsourcing. Take a look at your master task list, and start with those busy work tasks first to get them off your plate. Look for those business apps that you can purchase for a small monthly fee, that would be able to help streamline some of your tasks. And then look to outsourcing with contractors and how can you have a VA take some of those tasks off your plate.

I hope that you have found today’s article to be exciting, extremely insightful, and impactful. I would love for you to share this with other mamas who might be struggling in this area as well. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it is actually a sign of strength and it’s going to be what helps propel your business and grow it in the future.

If you are not a member of our free private Facebook community called The Purpose Gathering Mamas, I would love to invite you to join us. You can do so by heading to thepurposegathering.com/resources and click on the join our community tab.

We can’t wait to see you in there. As always mama. I am here rooting for you and you are not alone on this journey.

Resources:

• Get 50% off HoneyBook for your first year {affiliate link}
• Planoly is the best Instagram scheduling + planning app {affiliate link}
• FloDesk is a super beautiful, user friendly email platform {affiliate link}
• Episode 28- CEO Mindset + Quarterly Planning
• Episode 33- The One Woman Show Part 1: What to Outsource at Home
• Join our free Facebook Community
• Connect with me on Instagram or my Website
• The Efficient Mompreneur – Online Course