Stop Doing Everything Yourself!

It’s not easy (nothing is as a small business owner), but you need to find ways to start delegating or hiring outside resources.

Why?

Because you will burn yourself out, as well as put a ceiling on your growth.

We have all been there. It’s Sunday night, and you’ve got 50 emails to read before Monday morning; you are worried that if you don’t get to them, the week will start badly and get worse. You get anxious, spend precious family time working, and you won’t do a good job.

Ultimately, you will become less and less effective as a small business owner; you’ll resent the things you never liked doing, and you’ll eventually lose touch with the joy you got from the things you loved.

All of that slows growth, and you are a finite resource, so even if you don’t burn out, you will limit what your company can produce or deliver; hence your growth hits that famed ceiling.

Whilst protecting your cash runway is critical, so is your time, and people don’t value that enough. We have to find the balance…

Eliminate – Automate – Delegate

If you are a small business owner looking to outsource some of your work, then follow this process.

Eliminate – Really challenge yourself to see if certain jobs are needed. If you can remove 10% of your workload, that’s going to save you from needing to pay for external support for longer.

Automate – Utilise the software and AI tools already available to automate many of the jobs you spend hours doing. This will further free you up to work on the more important jobs to drive the business forward.

Delegate – Once you’ve exhausted all the above, it’s time to look for outside support. Make sure you look at all the different options available to you and ensure you only outsource the things you can properly brief – if you cannot explain it to someone properly, you are not ready to outsource it!

Let’s look at what this is like in reality…

What To Outsource vs Eliminate

Before we even think about delegating, do a quick analysis of the work you do (a good exercise at any time). There are a lot of different methods you can follow, but I tend to use the Eisenhower Matrix for this. Just split your tasks into Urgent/Not Urgent vs Important/No Important.

Once completed, assess how big these jobs are, and you’ll be surprised how many you might be able to drop (Not Important/Not Urgent). For example, I went through this exercise again when writing this article and found two jobs that we were just doing out of habit. One was writing a weekly report for a group of people at a client, most of whom had left! When I messaged the two remaining about how to update the circulation list, they said we could stop sending the report. 20 minutes a week back!

Before giving you some examples of things to automate or delegate, a word of caution: some things you hate should remain with you, and by that I mean sales! I honestly think selling is critical for a founder to do in the early stages because of the valuable feedback you get. I know for some it’s not a natural or comfortable element of the job, but it’s something you need to come to terms with.

Automate Before You Delegate

I will remind you to try and “automate before you delegate” (catchy hey!).

With the great software and AI tools out there, you have loads of opportunities to automate what you do, save time, and avoid spending on people. Here are just a few examples

Invoicing – software like Xero has great tools for automating all your invoicing needs, where you can automate the generation, distribution, and even chasing of invoices – saving hours a month
Use a scheduling tool for your social media. Create content in batches and schedule things out. It saves hours and is a far more creative approach
Booking in clients and prospects is so manual for most first-time founders because they don’t plan how it will scale, and before you know it, you are spending hours responding to requests, checking calendars, moving dates around etc. It takes time and risks missing a booking. Use software like Calendly to allow people to book directly into your calendar when you have time and without the need for you to do anything.

From an AI perspective, always remember two things

Your AI of choice is the best unpaid intern you will ever have. Think about every repetitive job that you hate and would love to have an intern/assistant for. That is your starter list of things to get your AI tool to support
Like an intern, your AI needs a proper brief; it needs detail. You wouldn’t ask an intern to complete a routine task by telling them one line. You explain the job. Taking a little extra time to expand on the requirements will save a long time down the line

As an example, I have met some great clients on UpWork in the past, whom I now mentor/coach via our Founders First programme, but going in a few times a day is quite an effort. So I worked with Claude on the type of people and jobs I was interested in.

I could have just listed a couple of keywords and price expectations, and it would have pulled up a list, but that seemed lazy. We went back and forth on the types of jobs I liked; I showed it previous jobs I’d won. We also spent a couple of days assessing potential jobs, and I was clear on the things I really liked and any red flags.

It means that I only get a couple of jobs sent to me each week, but they are usually spot on to what I’d be interested in. It’s saved me a couple of hours a week, and I genuinely think has helped me spot better jobs.

Delegation – How To Outsource

Once you have candidates for delegating, you need to think about where to find potential resources and then how to use them.

But first, to get you thinking, here are a few examples that small business owners typically outsource.

Bookkeeper – For many, this is the first thing that gets outsourced. It will save a considerable amount of time (particularly as you grow) and is one of the things you really don’t want to get wrong!

Inbox management – Using a VA to manage your emails and book appointments can save time on a job that doesn’t need your attention.

Phone answering – Another job for a good VA, that will not only save you time but actually improve the likelihood of getting that important sales call and not missing it because you are buy working.

Social content – For a lot of small business owners, creating content consistently is a drag. Outsourcing can be a massive gain for both your time and the quality of what you get back.

Where to find your resource

If we assume that you don’t have a vast team to take these jobs off you, we need to get creative with the sort of places you can find the resources to support you.

University schemes – many universities do programmes with local businesses where students get to do work placements to support their studies. This is more common in areas like marketing and IT.

LinkedIn is a place you might find good freelancers. The biggest reason to use this avenue is recommendations, meaning you’ll likely find better people. Ask your network; chances are one of them will have outsourced a similar requirement before.

Apprenticeships are an increasingly popular route to finding good, enthusiastic and affordable resources. Don’t mistake this for ‘cheap labour’; to make the most of an apprentice, you need to work with them, but you can bring on talented young people who can help with lots of different jobs, whilst they continue to be educated and develop.

Funding is another route for finding a way to pay for external support, and your local growth hub is one of the best places to start.

Finally, you have online marketplaces like Fiverr and UpWork. If you look around and brief these people well, then they can be great value, but you must know how to find and utilise people on these platforms.

But can I afford it?

A very fair question, with an answer in two parts. Firstly, it is about valuing your own time. Think about what you could be doing instead of these jobs; would that drive the business forward, and thus your return on investment will justify the costs.

Secondly, none of them cost as much as people assume. A piece of phone answering software can ensure you never miss a sales call again for less than £20 per month. A social media content creator might produce posts that get you that new sales contract for under £100.

But they rely on one thing: utilising these external resources correctly.

How to maximise your resource

You need to have a plan when you look to bring on board any external freelancer or contractor. Too many people just assume the freelancer will have all the answers and you simply need to employ them – and when it goes wrong, it’s the fault of the freelancer. But generally, if the small business owner has a plan, they will avoid wasted time and money. Here are a few tips for making it work.

Start with a small, paid test. Then a larger ‘project’. Never jump to a regular job or role; you need to understand the quality of the work and the character of the person
Hire a couple of freelancers to do the same job and stick with the best one long term
Make sure any ‘admin’ jobs are well documented before you outsource them – the world is littered with VAs that have failed because they were not given good instruction. If you cannot explain it properly, then you are not ready to outsource it
When you give them the task, ask them to play back what you asked in their own words – you’ll soon spot any holes or misunderstandings – talking of briefing…

Finally, let’s talk about briefing external resources. Simply put, a good brief is the difference between outsourcing working or not. I appreciate that sounds dramatic, but it really can be.

So much time is wasted fixing a bad job because you took shortcuts in creating the brief.

Just do the simple math. Ten minutes on a lazy brief vs 45 minutes to do it properly. At first you think you are being efficient; however…

Now you have to do two revision rounds before they get it, and there is a week’s delay. Often you won’t be happy and end up paying someone else to redo it.

Now we’ve wasted 2-3 hours compared to 45 minutes. And you’ve spent more money. And it’s taken longer to get the output.

Do it right the first time!

Now it’s time to put the above into practice. If you are still struggling or just need a little nudge in the right direction, this is why we are here.

We help people just like you every day. We can support them. Offer strategic advice. But we can also roll up our sleeves and get involved.

Go and have a look at our Founders First programme, which starts at just £125 a month.