Do you have your winning team in place?

05 Jun Do you have your winning team in place?

Posted at 06:00h in Work smarter by

Somebody who I can’t remember right now once said that no-one can make it alone.

Now, if you’re a solopreneur i.e. running your business on your own, how does this stack up?

Short answer – it doesn’t. Just because you are a solopreneur does not mean you should not be getting help in your business. If you want your business to be successful then you must get help.

I don’t mean going out and recruiting a team of employees. In fact, I normally recommend against this for most of my clients as it can get really complicated becoming an employer and you know I like to keep things simple.

What I’m talking about here is outsourcing.

Think about the things that you spend time doing that either:

  1. Aren’t money generating activities
  2. You’re not really that good at
  3. You hate doing
  4. You don’t have the time to do

Maybe you’re spending a good chunk of your working time on admin stuff.

Maybe you’re spending your working time on techie stuff that you don’t really understand.

Maybe you hate social media but know that it brings customers to your business.

Maybe you’re not getting round to the cleaning / ironing and it’s starting to get you down

These are the types of things you need to start paying someone else to do so that you can concentrate on growing your business and doing what you’re great at.

Maybe you need you need a cleaner, ironing service, a virtual assistant, a web designer, a technical assistant, a book-keeper or social media support, to mention a few.

Okay I know that you’re probably now thinking:

  1. I can’t afford to
  2. I can’t give control of something to someone else – it won’t be done right

(I’ve thought both of these myself)

You need to trust me on this one – if you are serious about running your business to make money and to fit around your family commitments you need to take the plunge and look at where you need some help.

If you think you can’t afford to you need to ask yourself ‘how could I afford to?’. You need to step back and look at good old big picture and weigh up the cost versus the benefit.

The cost is probably easy to find out by getting some prices online so you just need to get really clear on what benefits you are going to get in your business.

This may be in terms of extra customers it will bring, or freeing up your time to focus on your money generating activities, or giving you extra skills and confidence to grow your business and make more sales.

The next step is to bring the benefit back to a value in £ (or $) – for example, if you hired a VA to do 2 hours of admin a week that takes you 3 hours, what will you do in this 3 hours to bring more money into your business?

Or, you may have a ‘soft’ benefit that adds non financial value to you such as having extra time with your partner / kids. If this is important to you it can outweigh the cost of outsourcing. It really depends how important the benefit is to you and what you are prepared to give up for this. (Those coffees and takeaways really add up)

If you’re feeling that no-one else will able to do it like you and don’t want to give up control then I’m afraid you’re just going to have to learn to let go. You need to think about where you are now and the pain this is causing (lack of time? not enough customers?) and where you want to be.

Start slowly – maybe just try out a virtual assistant for a couple of hours and see how they get on.

Get recommendations – ask around people you know and on social media. Also check out people’s recommendations on their website or on LinkedIn.

Know what you are prepared to compromise on, remembering the benefit it gives you.

Accept that there are different ways to do things and just because somebody doesn’t do it your way doesn’t make it wrong.

I’d love to hear your experiences with outsourcing so please leave me a comment.

If you want some further support with identifying where you should be outsourcing and what you should be doing instead, then have a look at the options for working with me on my programmes page and book in a free 30 minutes ‘find out more’ session with me at www.meetme.so/alisonbradford

 

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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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