Should Home Businesses Outsource Some Tasks?
Supported Contributor Post
You probably felt a rush of relief during your first few weeks, or even months, after quitting your job and starting your own home or small business. However, after the dust had settled on your newly constructed life, you may have been alarmed at how much work was involved.
Unlike your regular job where you were responsible for only a few things, suddenly you were responsible for everything, from marketing and service or product delivery, to organizing your legal and financial matters. Many home business owners and freelancers understand the importance of hiring a lawyer and an accounting firm to deal with these issues. However, even with those tasks handled by professionals, most home business still have a great deal of tasks that need to be done, and not a lot of time to do them.
Home Business Tasks: From Too Little to Too Much
Initially, things may not have been too demanding because you only had a few clients or customers and a light workload. Most of your time was spent in studying marketing and applying what you had learned.
Later, after you acquired a few clients for your services or customers for your products, you may have found yourself struggling—but in a completely different way. While your initial struggles orbited around selling your product or service, your later struggles focused on juggling the all the work your relentless marketing efforts had attracted.
The Downside of Home Business Success
How do you cope with too much to do? How do you manage a heavy workload, tight schedules, and not enough time in the day to get it all done?
When first faced with the avalanche of new work, you probably just doubled down on the workload, getting up earlier, going to bed later, and skipping your favorite TV shows. You may even have sacrificed your stress-relieving visits to your favorite coffee shops or visiting with friends.
However, after a few weeks or months, you may have come to the shocking realization that you were working harder on your own business than you had when you worked at an emotionally-exhausting 9-to-5 job. In fact, while you were earning more in total, you were earning less on an hourly basis since you were often too tired to do the work quickly and efficiently.
Rescuing the Dream
Although you may have quit your job and started your business to increase your freedom and build your wealth, you may have found that the price of freedom was hard work. Ironically, you found yourself working so hard to secure your freedom that in some ways you had lost it. Yes, you now had more lifestyle choices now open to you, but you also did not have the time to enjoy it.
How do you rescue the dream? How do you cope with the consequence of success? The answer is actually quite simple. Quit working your business and start working your business. Instead of laboring, begin administrating. Instead of doing all the work yourself, delegate it. In short, outsource some of the work.
Outsource for Business Growth
Although you may be highly talented, you can’t do it all. Even if you know how to do everything, you probably will not have the time. By trying to do it all, you are stalling your business growth.
So how do you go from doing it all, to becoming the CEO of your home business and outsourcing some tasks?
Start small so as not to get overwhelmed. What tasks are tedious or time consuming, such as research or managing social media? As a rule of thumb, just delegate things that you can’t do yourself, usually because you don’t have the time or the skills. In the beginning, it’s not cost-effective to outsource work just because you don’t feel like doing it. Later, as you become more familiar with how to delegate, build your virtual team of independent contractors to handle everything from email and customer service, to website management and publicity. Interestingly enough, when you free up your personal time, you will find it easier to come up with creative ideas on how to generate more income.
It’s easy to find competent virtual support. You can ask for referrals from other home based business owners, or visit freelancing job websites to find freelancers for the type of person you need. These sites act as platforms for employers to post jobs and for freelancers to bid for the work. The freelance sites mediate if there is a conflict between you and the freelancer. Plus they have an escrow system to prevent scams, and provide a platform for transferring documents back and forth.
Also, you can outsource personal tasks as well, such as house cleaning.
If you’ve started your own home or small business, you may have been surprised how different reality is from your expectations. However, with a few small tweaks to your business operations, like outsourcing difficult and time-consuming
