JoshMany business owners are apprehensive about handing over the reins of their business to someone else, especially if they’ve been operating as a one man shop. But there comes a point in most businesses growth where outsourcing certain parts of the business is absolutely essential for taking things to the next level. If you’re not where to start with outsourcing, here are my top 4 business tasks that you need to outsource in order to free up your time to focus on more important things.
1. Bookkeeping
If you’re anything like me, then the admin side of the business can weigh down your creativity. For this reason I always suggest outsourcing bookkeeping as the first step to freeing up time. A good bookkeeper is worth their weight in gold, helping you ensure that your business is running smoothly. Without good accounting, it can be hard to keep track of expenses, profit and everything else that goes on behind the scenes of running a business. It can also be very complicated filing your taxes if you’re missing information or it’s simply not up to date.
2. Marketing
There are so many aspects to marketing these days, it’s not as simple as running an advertisement in the local paper and hoping for the best. You need to have a website, manage social media pages such as a Facebook page and maybe even an Instagram, you also need to keep search engine optimisation in mind. Then there are Facebook ads, Google ads, and the list goes on. If you’re not experienced in marketing then you could be almost throwing away extra income each month by not investing in high quality marketing services.
3. Emails
I feel like emails never stop and if you’re in an industry where you receive a lot of emails, this can be a great place to start outsourcing. You can hire an assistant, or virtual assistant, to help tackle the never ending pile of messages. If you’re worried they wont know how to handle the trickiest of emails, you can just ask them to leave it marked as unread and you can comb through them every day or a few times a week. You might be surprised to find out how much extra free time you have by reducing your email load each day.
4. Your Weaknesses
Is there something you’re terrible at getting done, constantly putting it off until it’s well overdue? For me, in my business, that was dealing with invoices. I found it so much better to hire an assistant to chase them up for me. As it’s her job, she’s much more likely than I am to keep on top of things, and it frees my time up for things I’m good at. Sit down with a pen and paper, and write down all the tasks that you actively avoid in your business, or that you’re not good at. These are some of the best things to outsource!
For me personally once I started outsourcing tasks I didn’t like or I wasn’t good at, I saw a huge change in my business for the better. Hopefully these four things can help you transform the way your business works, and ensure even better profits.
