You probably don’t need us to tell you that it’s a challenge to run a business. But when you end up having to work on all kinds of things that drain your time, your energy, and don’t have a big impact on your business (oh, and don’t let you take a vacation either!), it becomes ten times as challenging.
As entrepreneurs, we don’t have the luxury of throwing away our energy on things that aren’t moving the needle forward. We need to be working in our zone of genius as much as possible and the more time you spend outside of there, the bigger a disservice you’re doing to your business, your clients, your students, and your team members.
So, how do you know when it’s time to hire and start outsourcing tasks from your ever-growing to-do list?
Whether you’re a solopreneur or someone with a decent sized team, we’re running through the key signs it might be time to get some help.
#1: You Have a Plan to Start Selling
A lot of us are guilty of thinking that we have to make the money first before hiring a new team member. Because I have to have the money in order to hire them, right?!
This way of thinking certainly makes sense from a non-business owner, average human being perspective. In your average consumer lifestyle (credit cards aside), it’s pretty normal to save up for something and then buy it. And so we often try to take that mentality into business and think, “okay, I am going to save up for this next associate by just doing more work here.”
But the truth is, you need that person in order to get to the next level of revenue. It’s not revenue first, and then you hire that person. And that is the investment philosophy that will save your business!
Once you have a plan in place, and you know, for example, your course is going to start selling at a certain date, you can start thinking at that point about what team members you are going to bring on. The key point here is to think about it sooner than you think you need to.
As business owners, it’s very easy for our plates to get overloaded and then you suddenly get to this place where it becomes so hard to even consider going through the hiring process. It becomes just another thing to add to your mile-long task list. Where am I going to find the time to put together a test and the job description and post the job description and go through the applicants and find the ones that I even want to do a screening and…ARGH!!!
You can feel the cortisol rising and then it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking “well I’ll just do it instead”. Yes, that may be easier in the short term (although not in some ways because you’re so chock-a-block), but it’s certainly not a wise move for the long term.
You need space to be able to think of and work on the things that only YOU can do. If there are things on your plate that someone else can do (and can do at a cheaper rate than you!), then why wouldn’t you outsource it?
#2: You’re Always On and Working
We all know the phrase “time is money” and when you’re wearing multiple hats and steering the ship of your business, every second really does count. Yet, many entrepreneurs often end the day feeling like they’ve barely scratched the surface of their long list of tasks.
This is why we encourage every business owner to conduct regular audits of their time, so that you know exactly what tasks you’re working on and for how long. It can be incredibly eye-opening to see 1. how many hours you’re actually working! and 2. how chunks of your day might be spent on tasks that aren’t directly contributing to your goals or business growth.
Putting an hourly rate to your time can also give you a better sense of how much money you’re spending on your time and what your time is actually worth (which, by the way, is only going to increase as you go).
Doing a time audit makes it a little bit easier to figure out when, how, and to whom it makes sense to outsource certain activities. Yes, you’re now paying someone to do that task, but your time is worth X amount more, and so you’ll be able to spend more time doing those high value tasks instead.
#3: Your Tasks Aren’t in Your “Zone of Genius” or Drain Your Energy
The first place to start as you think about hiring new team members, is to consider what you currently have on your plate. What is on your to-do list that is in your zone of genius? What do you enjoy doing? And what are you exceptionally good at? Not just “pretty good” at, but exceptionally good at–aka nobody on your team does it as well as you do (and if you were to hire, you’d have to pay top dollar because you are so flipping good at it!).
After you’ve identified the tasks in your zone of genius, you can start moving into the stuff that you hate and that you’re not especially good at. Those are the very first tasks to get off your plate and then you can work your way up. Next, you might offload the tasks you do not really like, but you’re good at. Yes, you’re good at it, but if you don’t really like it, that means it drains your energy. And, especially as business owners, our energy is a finite and incredibly valuable resource, so you have to treat it as such.
As you bring people on your team, it’s important to get your team members to do this task audit regularly as well. At Nicki K Media, our team does a quarterly task audit, where we all look at the tasks we’re doing, see which ones are draining our energy, and which ones are maybe not in our zone of genius and could be done by someone else on the team.
The worst thing that can happen is that one of your team members gets to a place where they’re completely overloaded and riding fast on the train to burnout central—and you don’t even know about it. (Or maybe they don’t even realize it!) By regularly going through this process, you can identify some of the areas you might need help with down the line and avoid that trap we mentioned before of “I’ll just do it myself”.
The ideal scenario would be that you and every single person on your team spend all of your time in the “I like this and I’m really great at this” category. It is probably unrealistic to expect to experience that every day but that’s where you want to be heading toward: everybody on your team is working in their zone of genius and they’re not doing anything else that is energy draining or something they are not good at.
#4: Customer Service is Still on Your Plate
As a business owner, you do, of course, need to be aware of what’s going on with your customer service. For example, if people are sending in the same question again and again, you know it’s something you need to address or potentially add to your program.
And yes, you also get the people who are writing in to tell you that they love what you do. But sadly, the way that human beings work is that when we get negative feedback, we give that much more weight than the positive feedback.
There are always disgruntled people out there and unfortunately getting negative feedback can be enough to knock you off our game for the rest of the day. A lot of the time, these people have no experience with you at all but still end up trolling you in the middle of the night! And as business owners, that is not something we have time for. You need to get this off your plate as soon as possible so that almost nothing from customer service land gets to you.
There are so many business owners who keep doing customer service because it’s easy and a lot of resistance tends to come up. The thought of having to hire someone, train them up, teach them what to do in each of these scenarios…and how else am I going to know what people are saying on my ads?!
But you need to build yourself a bubble. And it all goes back to hiring the right person for the job. An expert should be able to come to you with ideas and strategies for sharing information with you in a way that strips it of the very emotionally driven language you tend to see in people’s ad comments.
#5: You Can Train Other People to be the “Expert”
Nicki K Media is a multi-brand company and our first company is our copywriting training program for people who want to become professional copywriters. The program offers coaching on copywriting in the Facebook group, where people do exercises and practice their copywriting skills.
When Nicki first started the business, she was the person in the Facebook group giving feedback every day. But providing feedback on the same exercises soon became very draining.
As the expert in copywriting, Nicki thought that she had to be the one in the group coaching people and offering feedback. But the truth is, even if you are the expert, there is someone else that you can train up to do it (it might just take some time to find them).
Remember that they don’t necessarily have to get to your 100% level of expertise—you just need to get them to the point where they can handle the vast majority of it. And as they learn from you, they’re only going to get better and better too.
Even though it might take some time to find the right people, it will be so worth it when you do. Everyone has a different way of looking at things, so that in itself can bring additional value and new perspectives to offer your students.
#6: Someone Else Could Do it Better
As you start to outsource all of these different tasks, you should hopefully be getting to the point where you’re working on stuff that you pretty much like and you’re quite good at.
But if it’s not the stuff that you really like or are exceptional at, it’s also something that is an opportunity for you to outsource. There’s still going to be somebody out there who will do it so much better than you could, even if you could do it to B+ standard. There’s somebody out there that you could bring onto the team who could take this off your plate and deliver A+ quality, and that is an opportunity.
When you’re starting to even take your hands off stuff that you’re pretty darn good at, you’re getting close to an A team that runs super efficiently and where everyone—for the most part—is pleased with the challenges that they have.
As your company grows and as people develop, you’re going to be taking things off plates, putting things on plates, bringing new people on the team, and sometimes even deciding you don’t need a certain role anymore. It is a process that requires constant tweaking, but that is how you continue to enjoy yourself within your business and how your team members continue to enjoy themselves and want to stay with your business.
Read More
In this blog post, you’ll discover the actionable tips to help you fill roles with ease and ensure you find the *right* person for the job.
Watch More
In this Energize Your Online Business podcast episode, Nicki and Kate discuss their strategic tips when it comes to the hiring process, including the order in which you should offload tasks, and the most effective ways to grow your team while building stability.
Your Turn!
Are you ready to start hiring? Let us know in the comments which tasks you’re hoping to outsource first!