Why You Should Not Outsource, And What To Do Instead!
Today, I’m going to be talking about why you should not outsource. This is a controversial topic that you’re probably thinking, why are you telling me something different to what everyone else is telling me? The reason being is because I have seen from both sides. I have been a service provider. I have been an agency owner, and in the agency owner role I also saw from a client’s perspective.
Leading a team of 15 people at one point. It takes a lot of work when you have a team.
My team were incredible, but it takes a lot of work. I had to change roles from being a service for a provider to being an agency owner to actually lead in a business. That was a really big change. So, I want to be able to share my experience with you guys. I have then been able to see why that doesn’t work, why things need to be done differently.
The first is your business model
This might seem really, really simple but but so many people look at their business model and think oh, I want to add another offer to the mix. I want to do something different, which is great. You want to evolve your business. However, you need to have a proven business model in order to outsource. So if you are one of these people where you put out an offer and you self sabotage because you think no one’s bought it, it must be the wrong thing. Maybe I need to go and create something else. Off you go go to create something else.
However, in amongst this, you’ve become really overwhelmed. You’ve become really stressed out because you’ve just started building this business, this course, this membership, whatever that may be. And now you’re moving on to something different. You’re starting all over again. Right? It’s stressful. Building a business is hard work. So when you are doing this each time you are chopping and changing, you are starting from the ground up, which means that you are really going to struggle to understand what business model is working for you.
You need to have a proven business model with satisfied clients to be able to understand that this is the business model for you. When you’ve had this business model set up, you are probably going to have started as one to one. So if you’re working as one to one and then you’ve got that running and you can start to think oh, I really want to be able to serve my clients at a different level or group capacity.
You can then start to look at what offers you’re going to add in while continuing with your current offers. It is likely you start thinking I need someone to help me. That’s usually when you’re going to be looking at okay, I’ve got this running. This is working really well. But I need to be evolving.
I need to be doing more things and you can kind of remove yourself from doing certain elements of that delivery.
Making sure that you have someone that you take on that can help you with the delivery of that service. You may be thinking how can someone help me with one to one? But the delivery is so much more than the one to one. This depends on your specific delivery method of course, but if you are delivering, say for instance over the phone or on a consultancy basis where maybe you’re doing some of the implementation, you can outsource that to help you free up time to focus on your next level offerings.
As an example, you can outsource write up of notes, write up the reports from your phone calls, write up the emails deal with the customer service side of things. There’s so many different parts of the client delivery that you can have someone helping you with. But you need to have your first model up running, working and proven before you can do that.
Number two is slowly slowly don’t hire just because you feel that you need to be able to say I have a team
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make and that is because they just start their business. They’ve got one or two clients and they’re feeling good. Start to think oh, I really need to have a team because what are they going to think if Sandra down the street has a team and I don’t. I need to hire someone just so I have someone there. Honestly, this is all to do with ego and vanity here. You know, you don’t need to have a team just say you’ve got a team.
There is no award given to say well done, you have a team. You need to have the right team you need to have the right people you need to have the right business, the right systems, the right foundation, you need to have so much more in place before you hire a team member. And it shouldn’t just be because you want to be seen as having an assistant.
You know people can grow their business to six figures solo! I know plenty of people that have and you know, that’s something to be darn proud of. Right?
That’s something that people should shout about. Not that they have hired a team that they can’t afford. The team member and business owner are stressed and they’re burning out because they’ve hired this team member just to say they have a team. That’s not something that you get an award for. So please, please, please do not hire just to say that you have an assistant!
Number three, your business should have a profit so your business should have the profit margin there to be able to afford a team member
This is something that people do quite a lot where they think I need to outsource. I can’t afford to. So I’m going to take it from my salary and use it to outsource. No. You need to make sure that you are paying yourself well for what you’re doing. But you also need to make sure that your business can sustain outsourcing because it’s very different from just saying okay, I’m gonna take £500 cut from my pay this month to actually taking the £500 cut from your pay for the next six months.
Just think of all the time and money you invest in outsourcing and training this person up, but if it is not sustainable and you have to eventually let them go — that is alot of wasted time and energy!
You need to be able to make sure that you can sustainably keep this team member in their seat. Corporations never just hire anyone just to just because they feel that they need some more people. There’s many decisions that go into the hiring process in corporate it’s unbelievable. And most of the time corporate are trying to strictly streamline down to get rid of team members. Trying to reduce the amount of things that they outsource.
I’m not saying to run your business like a corporate Of course I’m not.
But I just wanted to get that point across here of you need to have the money to be able to outsource sustainably. If you don’t, you’re going to really struggle because what I found when people do and they don’t have the money there to do it. They end up burning out because the only option they have is to work harder is to work longer is to get more clients is to get more work through.
And that’s a really slippery slope. It really does lead to burnout because you are under so much pressure and so much stress that it comes out in your energy. Your clients feel the stress. So really making sure that you are in a comfortable place to be able to afford to outsource is paramount. It may just be to start small. You may just say I just want a few hours a month and that is perfectly fine. But please, please please make sure you are staying in your budget
Lastly, but certainly not least, is that foundations are set up
Make sure that they are sustainable, that they are efficient that they are scalable. Make sure that you have these foundations in place because without them, you are going to have a business that’s full of chaos. You are going to have a business that you don’t know what’s happening. Don’t know what strategies are working. You’ve just got all these strategies going on. Something’s working, but you’re not quite sure what. Then you are literally going to be paying someone to do a strategy that you don’t even know it brings a return back to your business.
So, make sure that you have the foundations set up. Make sure that you are ready for the investment to outsource. There is nothing worse from a team members point of view, than going into a business and the business owner saying yeah, you just just get on with this for me. They then go and you try to figure it out and then everything they do is wrong because it’s not the way the business owner would have done it.
They start to feel burnout creeping in.
So, really start to feel that they can’t do this. So they leave and move on. Then you find that your churn rate for your team members is so high because you don’t have the foundation so you don’t have the support there for them.
You really need to be making sure that you are hiring someone to run your system.
You have your system in place. Someone comes in and runs that system, someone maintains that system for you. And that’s really what you want to be doing. Because that then means that the person you hire has the time and the headspace to really get involved with that system. To really look at it and think okay, where can the improvements come in? What can I do that’s going to add value to you as a business owner?
That’s what most service based business owners want to do. They want to provide value.
They want to do their job well, but they cannot do it without your guidance and your support. So, you put your guidance and support into a system, process, automation to really get into the heart of your business to understand what’s going on.
I hope you have found this useful. As always, if you do have any questions then do pop that pop me a message I’m always happy to answer them for you. I will be starting a new series soon as well. I’ll be answering common questions on a video that will be really, really exciting. So if you want me to answer any of those questions, then please pop me a message and I’ll be happy to do that next time.
