How to identify what to offload from your to-do list
“Many solopreneurs struggle with outsourcing. This workshop will help you get better organized with what you need to do for your business and for your clients.”
Outsource thoughtfully
Outsourcing is a big topic, which is why I dedicated an entire category to it. As a solopreneur, you’re only one person, right? And as a lifestyle solopreneur, you likely don’t want to have a bunch of traditional employees on payroll and deal with managing, paying, providing benefit packages, etc. etc. etc. I know I certainly never wanted to do that, and if you’re here, you don’t want to either.
So in this snack-sized workshop, I want to go over a few strategic points that will equip you with what you need to put a solid outsourcing plan together. Let’s start with one of my “HOW TO” videos, “How to find the revenue to outsource to quality resources” that I shot and posted on YouTubeTerry.com:
Let’s recap and go into a bit more depth on what I shared in the above video as it’s an important guiding strategy for planning your outsourcing strategy.
Revenue
It’s a catch-22, I know. To find the revenue to be able to outsource quality you need the revenue. Revenue is a critical first step because you should never outsource something you can’t afford. You should either table it, do it yourself or find another way to get it done. Many of my clients stopped the sales process because they felt they needed a brochure, slick website, fancy branding, video etc. when really all they needed to do was identify their target prospect and pick up the phone and give them a call. Ask the question, “Am I using [this thing I need to outsource] as an excuse not to prospect?” What is it about prospecting that you are insecure about? Is the thing you need so important that you can’t prospect without it? There may be situations where this is true. If so, you’ll need go likely go into debt or find the revenue somewhere to get it done so you can get back to prospecting.
Your sales machine (marketing, prospecting, networking, engagement on social, content marketing, etc.) should always be humming. Over time, you can step away from running this machine manually by yourself and get into automating and delegating it. However, there are always going to be certain stages in your sales machine that you will need to do yourself.
Prioritize
Outsourcing should be a gradual investment. There are generally two categories of outsourcing:
Outsourcing for project-based work that’s “one and done” or sporadic work, such as a sales brochure, branding package or legally forming an LLC or S-corp.
Outsourcing for ongoing support work such as a virtual assistant to help with travel plans, administrative work or a website programmer to support your Wordpress website (another reason I love Squarespace LOL).
Things to ask yourself when prioritizing what to outsource:
Is the thing I want to outsource going to directly improve my ability to earn more revenue?
Is the thing I want to outsource going to free up my time to do more revenue-producing activities?
Is the thing I want to outsource going to make my business look more professional so I can appeal to higher-caliber clients?
Notice how each of these criteria is about generating more revenue with less work? So you can see how it all ties back to revenue. So if you want to find the revenue, you have to first make decisions that will generate more revenue.
Quality
As I mentioned in the video, when you’re bootstrapping a one-person business, you do a lot yourself (or get a talented relative/friend to help you for free). What you start out with may look pretty average, however, honor your early days because they were the inception of your startup solopreneur business. When it comes time to outsource—even if you want to outsource in an early stage or before launching your business—you need to clarify what you determine as “quality.”
Funny story. One of my very first clients back when I started my business in 2006 was a neighbor who was the CEO of a very profitable workers’ comp company in Orlando. He didn’t have an internal marketing department or any graphics or copy support in-house. He hired me to design and build him a website. Pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. He wanted his website to have the gravitas of the Apple brand. Yes, Apple. One of the most recognizable brands in the world. But he was outsourcing to a recently laid-off graphic designer who charged hourly (I won’t mention how much because it’s embarrassingly low) for good, solid design. I remember thinking, “So help me understand how you want me to design something that has the quality and caliber and technicality of Apple.com when you only want to pay a few hundred dollars for it.”
All I can say is that I’ve come a long way and that client to this day is a current client and I appreciate the business he has given me over the years to help me grow mine. But the point I’m trying to make is to set your own standard of what you deem as “quality.” You can find good resources for your projects or ongoing work at affordable rates, you may have to search for them. So don’t always assume that “quality output” is only from high-ticket resources.
I’ll confess, I’m a perfectionist. That’s one reason why I’ve always had a challenge outsourcing to people who do creative work. Instead of being “okay” with something that my client would just love, I overdeliver because my level of “quality” is higher than theirs. So determining what that is will help you create criteria for outsourcing so you don’t get disappointed and the work you do outsource meets your level of quality for your business and/or your clients.
Identifying what to offload from your to-do list
Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes (or veggies if you’re a vegetarian or vegan) of this workshop. The list above about revenue is the best place to start when identifying what you need to outsource. Beyond that, there are a few more questions you can ask to help prioritize and identify what you can and should outsource.
The Eisenhower Matrix
Before I get to that list, you may get some benefit from incorporating a modified version of the Eisenhower Matrix (EM) into your outsourcing plan. Watch the video to learn about the EM if your’e unfamiliar with it or need a refresher.
The EM is designed to help you prioritize tasks every day, and it’s a simple and powerful tool I highly recommend. How I would adjust the EM to help you with outsource planning is to use the four quadrants this way:
Urgent/Important: Things that YOU should be doing yourself such as prospecting and selling
Important/Less Urgent: Things you can outsource that WILL drive revenue
Less Important/Urgent: Things you can outsource to a subscription service or tool that AUTOMATES a part of your business (such as a sales funnel, onboarding series, evergreen marketing webinar, etc.)
Less Important/Less Urgent: Things that you’d like to outsource but should ELIMINATE or table for the future because they don’t drive revenue or create more time for you to prospect and sell.
Questions to ask when identifying what to outsource
Begin this exercise by compiling an inventory of the actual tasks and activities YOU do every day. Use the adjusted EM above to prioritize them.
Can I do this task myself more efficiently?
Is there someone I know who can do this task for me for very little investment?
Can I partner with another solopreneur to economize the investment? (Such as sharing a VA)
Can I automate what I’m doing manually for a relatively low fee? (Such as investing in an email automation tool such as ActiveCampaign or MailChimp)
Can I create a product that can generate passive income that can support outsourcing investments? (Such as an online course or membership, however, creating these products will cost time and money up front to build and market)
Is there a way to consolidate tasks into a simpler format that can achieve the same result?
Am I doing this task myself because I enjoy doing it? If so, how can I adjust this task so that it drives more revenue so I can keep doing it and increase my revenue to outsource tasks I enjoy less? (I fall into this category a lot because I love to create!)
Am I doing a fair job doing this task but want to delegate it so it can be done by a more skilled person/team? (I have done this with Facebook advertising. I can do FB ads relatively well, however, running FB ad campaigns and managing the analytics is VERY time consuming and something that I needed to outsource so I could focus on the high return activities I could do such as taking care of my PappyClub subscribers! 🤗)
Do I have the confidence to let go of and delegate certain tasks? If not, why? What do I get out of doing the task myself? Is my doing the task the best thing for my business?
That last question is a big one. It helps you identify if you’re emotionally compromised about a specific aspect of your business. If you’re struggling with this last question, I’m happy to give you some coaching on it as it could be a great growth opportunity for you as a business owner.
Well, that should help you get better organized around the idea of outsourcing, an important part of a solopreneur business. You should be able to find the right balance of automating, delegating and eliminating tasks in your business to run it as efficiently, profitably and to your comfort level as possible.
