As small business owners, we always have a lot on our plate. But at some point we need to accept we can’t do everything. There are literally not enough hours. And the whole point of running your own business is to have freedom to live the life you want. When we try to do it all we risk limiting our growth and losing the joy.
I can guarantee that whatever it is in your business that you don’t enjoy doing, there is someone else out there who does love doing it. Someone who is an expert in that thing. So why not get them to do it and free up your time to focus on the things you do enjoy.
As an Online Business Manager (OBM), this is what I do for my clients. I take on the tasks they don’t have time for, don’t want to do, or don’t have the skillset to do well. Most of all, I support my clients so they can feel confident taking on more work, knowing they have me there to back them up and keep them accountable.
What do you love to do?
You probably already have a good idea of what business tasks bring you joy and create spark, and which ones you dread and put off. The key to elevating our business is to work to our strengths and then delegate or outsource the things we don’t enjoy or don’t have the skills for.
I have found there are a couple of triggers that can help reveal the tasks you might want to think about outsourcing:
- What tasks are you always putting off, pushing to next week or procrastinating over?
- What tasks do you throw in the ‘too hard’ basket?
- Do you have some goals that you are struggling to hit, or even get started on?
I will readily admit that I am not visually creative. I can use Canva, but I really don’t enjoy it. So I don’t do it. I outsource my image creation to designers, who can do it twice as fast and produce fantastic results.
I recently spent a week recovering from my COVID vaccination. During that week I caught up on a bunch of stuff and was really smashing through my to do list…except for one task. I kept pushing it to the bottom of the list, and at the end of the week it was still sitting there. So this was a big alarm bell to me that this task brings me no joy and if I want it to get done I need to consider getting someone else to do it for me.
Just because we are running our own businesses doesn’t mean we have to do it all. If it is something you don’t enjoy or want to do, then let someone else do it!
And you don’t need to outsource everything all at once. My advice is to start off small and then expand once you feel comfortable. Let’s say social media content creation is something that falls in your ‘too hard’ or ‘don’t like’ basket. You could get started by finding a social media manager to create a handful of posts for you. If it works out, you could ramp it up to more frequent posting.
The burden of knowing you need to do something when you don’t want to is so much worse than the hassle of handing it off. So do yourself a favour and enjoy that immediate sense of relief from getting someone else to do it. 😊
Ultimately, outsourcing is a long-term investment in growing your business. But it is also an investment in yourself, and in the lifestyle, you want to live.
If you are ready to make that investment and tap into the power of outsourcing for growth, book in a free 30 min consultation where we can explore the kind of tasks I can take
