Photo by Melissa Claire Photography
When you’re bootstrapping your business or have control issues, it’s easy to feel you need to do all the things. You make plans for tasks you may or may not want to do. Trust me, I’ve done it-I still do it. If you don’t find a way to outsource or create a system going to burn yourself out and that’s not a cute look.
“Then when do I need to hire someone?”
Good question. Make a list of things you do every day and rate them from 1-10. One means you dread doing it while a ten means you love it.
Chances are, the things you hate doing because it takes too long. Another reason you may hate doing that task? You don’t know how to do it.
Example: You DIY your website, use a bunch of plugins to get it to function the way you want. By the way, stop doing this–it’s dangerous. You have to perform updates and maintenance on your site, which is annoying, but if you don’t do it your website “breaks.” And honestly, you’re too busy doing your job to worry about said issues.
So your website continues to break and you get frustrated every time though you know what it is.
You can do one of two things:
One, keep forgetting to update your plugins, sacrificing a functional and safe website.
Two, finally hire someone to do this task for you. Hire a developer to help you rid of plugins that may be damaging your site, and pay them a retainer to do weekly or monthly maintenance (if you’re on WordPress I suggest weekly).
Now your time and energy can go back to focusing on what you want to while worrying about one less thing.
Other things to outsource or automate:
Editing podcasts and videos, a photographer for branded content, social media management, admin tasks like organizing emails, capturing leads, creating marketing needs for promotion, copywriting, email marketing…
Anything you hate doing that’s taking away from growing your business.
Evaluate your business needs, tasks, and gauge how long it takes for you to do it. Even if you have to automate, taking a couple of hours during the weekend to learn software that makes your processes run smoother outweighs not knowing it at all and doing something you dislike.
What do you want to automate or outsource? Going to the gym is a perfect answer.
