5 areas you need to outsource right now!

5 areas you need to outsource right now!

Are you feeling a bit time deprived right now? Not enough hours in the day to get everything done?

Let me remind you of one of the easiest ways to get some extra hours: if you don’t have enough time, you can always buy somebody else’s.

Here are 5 things you need to outsource right now.

You may be hanging on to some of these areas in the mistaken belief that you have to do everything yourself. (Sorry to break it to you, but you are not Superman / Superwoman)

Or perhaps you’re trying to save pennies and keep your costs down.

I understand that, and you’re right to be managing your costs, but if you are at the stage in your business when you don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done, then something has to give.

If you haven’t done this exercise before, I suggest you do it now.

  1. Work out what you want to earning this next year.
  2. Work out the number of weeks you want work and multiply this by the number of hours you want to work each week.
  3. Divide your figure in number 1 by the figure in part 2 – this gives you your target hourly rate.

As a very general rule of thumb, anything you can outsource at a lower cost than your target daily rate, should be outsourced. This will then leave your time to focus on doing the money generating activities in your business, and achieving your income target.

So, if you haven’t already done so, here is my list of the 5 areas you should outsource right now:

1. Domestic stuff

If you’re still doing the cleaning, ironing and gardening, and you don’t enjoy it, then get someone else in to do it. This is one of the most cost effective areas to outsource and free up your time. You can include childcare here also – do you need to pay for some extra help to look after your kids to free up some more time?

You’re only going to be paying around £10-15 an hour for most of this – which I expect is a lot lower than your target hourly rate!

2. Admin support

If you’re spending time on general admin tasks, such as typing up notes, transcribing audio, data entry, invoicing etc., then you can easily get help to do this.

A good Virtual Assistant is about £15-25 per hour, and you can normally hire them for just the amount of hours you need.

3. Design work

(Unless of course you’re a designer by profession, which I know some of you are!)

This is a specialist area, and to be honest, if you don’t know what you’re doing then you can up with work that looks pretty crap. (I speak from experience here!) It looks unprofessional and amateurish – not the impression you want give of your business, I’m sure.

If budget is really tight, look at sites like fiverr.com for small pieces of work ( I can hear the graphic designers moaning now). For $5 dollars it’s possible to get something that looks good. I recommend using 2-3 different designers on Fiverr for the same job – you get a choice and it still only costs you $10-15.

For a larger piece of work, it’s always worth hiring a professional designer.

4. Techy stuff

Again, assuming it’s not your trade, anything that’s IT based is a specialist area.

Make sure you have your hardware supported and your data backed up.

For me, it’s anything that I call a ‘hair pulling’ job i.e. it has me tearing my hair out.

Website updates and maintainence. Getting systems to talk to each other. Moving your email to another provider. Anything that has you tearing your hair out in frustration!

5. Accounting work

Finally, most business owners hate getting into the detail of their accounts and dealing with tax. So, whilst you need to know certain numbers to manage your business, get an accountant on your team to deal with all the nitty gritty and the tax stuff.

They’ve studied a long time to learn about these things so you don’t have to!

There you have it – the top 5 areas to outsource right now if you don’t have enough time.

Leave me a comment to let me know which areas you are going to outsource, and if you think there are others I should add to this list 🙂

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Alison Bradford

Alison Bradford is a business coach who works with smart, ambitious business owners to get clarity about how they can grow their business and increase profit. Sign up here to learn 6 easy ways you can boost profit in your business today.
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