When To Outsource Your Work
You did it. You’re over the initial speed bumps of setting up your brand. Your clients are happy and the bills are paid. But right now, you turned down a prospective client since you’re stretching yourself thin over many tasks. Your current work is souring from excitement to anxiety. The thought of a deadline makes your palms sweat. You love working independently and you’re fiercely protective of your brand, but is it time to *gulp* outsource some of the work? You want to have a firm grasp on this empire that you built but sometimes it’s okay to hire outsourced help.
Here are some ways to tell if you need to outsource your work:
Distinguish the headrush from the headache
You love a challenge and tight deadlines fuel your enthusiasm. It may mean cutting back on sleep and loading up on caffeine to finish a project, and you love the thrill of these nail-biting projects. But if your calendar is brimming with work, has no breather scheduled in sight, and you’re just about making each deadline in the nick of time, it’s time to reassess if you’re in control of your business or if the business is steering your professional life.
On the personal front, you’re declining calls from loved ones and are out of touch on life updates from the closest people in your support circle. And you forgot to water your plants… again. If your business isn’t giving you time to have a personal life, it’s time to reassess how much you’re taking on.
Your business wasn’t built in a day
You built your entrepreneurial empire as a way of channeling your personality and passion into work that you love. But taking on too much work can have repercussions on what you’ve established so far.
When you’re overworked, you’re likely to miss small details that you normally catch, or skip a specific request from the client. Of course, your client understands that you’re human and won’t mind a few hiccups, but if you miss something really important to them or repeatedly make mistakes, they could direct less business to your doorstep.
Understand that while your ideas and potential are limitless, your energy reserves are not. You have to be able to step back from work to replenish your energy. If you recognize that your pile of work is wobbling, consider segmenting the work and sharing the load with another freelancer. Don’t be a slave to your success by holding onto every task in that pile, it could come crashing down on you as the sole worker.
Go back to the vision board
Think back to why you started this business and how you wanted it to make you feel—probably empowered, self-sufficient and in charge. Is your business making you feel that way now?
How big did you want your business to be when you started out? There is no wrong answer, you can’t aim too low or dream too big. Did you have a number in mind with regard to clients or income, have you surpassed that number or do you still have to achieve it? Think about where you draw the line between how much you can accomplish by yourself and how much help you need. It’s tempting to think you just need better organization or time management and do without the assistance. And maybe sometimes it really does come down to self-discipline, but if the work is eating away at your mental health, no new project management software is going to give it to you. You just need the extra hands to help you let go of gripping every demand with too much attention.
Enhance your business’s offerings
To set yourself apart from the competition, you may need to add on additional services to your core offering to keep up with the industry and for your clients to have all their needs serviced at one place. Most often, not all of the demands will fall into your forte. You will need to onboard an expert in that respective field. Yes, you could watch countless YouTube tutorials, and do an extensive search of Google to develop this skill that falls outside your domain of expertise, or you could just hire someone who has studied and trained for exactly that, and will certainly have more experienced comprehension of the task than you do.
If you need to outsource the work, here are a five questions you need to ask yourself:
After working solo for a while, how good am I at sharing the work that goes into a brand that I single-handedly built?
Am I ready to step back from the workload? If no, why? What is holding me back?
If I am to be the point of contact between the client and the freelancer, how good am I at conveying instructions precisely?
Does the nature of my business involve hiring talent that can follow instructions to a T or being able to think independently so that my brand can stand out more?
Do I need to raise my prices to cover their remuneration and how will I communicate this to my clientele?
Outsourcing your work is a result of your business expanding or making yourself a priority—whichever it is, congratulations! You’ve mastered the art of setting up a business to a point where it can employ more people. By outsourcing the work, you give someone else a chance in the early or middle stages of their freelance journey. They’re a person with a drive to expand their skill set, just as you were at the start of your entrepreneurial journey.
