When I first started my journey as an entrepreneur, I wanted to do all small and large tasks myself save on operational costs. That worked for a while but as time went on, I started to realize how little time I had for these menial tasks. I’m talking about:
— Accounting
— Organizing files
— Scheduling
— Lead generation
— Marketing
After some time I realized that there were parts of my business that really deserved my full time and attention, and others that I can pass on to someone else. I am talking about
This is what opens the door to having more time in your day and much less stress.
How do you begin? Well first, i suggest you take a real look at where you are spending your time. At the link below, i have provided a simple template of my time journal that i used to intake where my time was being spent. Get the template here
So what do you do? Every 30mins of your day from when you open your eyes and close them, take note of what you did. Do it for a week and then when you review it you’ll start seeing what your pattern is where you can gain more time by outsourcing or plainly stopping that activity as a whole.
Second step is to think about what your time is worth. How much do you charge hourly for the services you provide or make hourly at your job? Are you charging enough? Are you being paid enough? I have had many clients whom I helped realize that they weren’t charging enough for their worth or stayed at a job for too long without being compensated for their worth. If you think that you need help with this, please don’t hesitate to book a call with me.
I can buy you time
Let’s fast forward to the last step. Let’s assume that your time is worth $100/hour and you’re faced with the task of cleaning your home. Think about how long that will take you. Let’s assume it would take you a total of 4 hours. That is $1000 lost on a task that you could have paid an accountant $50/hour and it would take them a quarter of the time. In a nutshell, you would be gaining time and money.
There is a basic overview on how to approach outsourcing your tasks. Now it’s just a matter of taking the time to make your calculations and see what you can do.
Let’s first start with outsourcing administrative tasks such as the ones mentioned above:
— Accounting
— Organizing files
— Scheduling
— Lead generation
— Marketing
Ideally you would want to find yourself a bookkeeper, a virtual assistant and a business assistant for the marketing and lead generation. There are a couple of freelancer hiring platforms that can serve as a hub to build your team.
— Upwork
— Freelancer
With these websites you can create an employer account and post your job with a job description as well as your budget. From here you will get notifications of freelancers that are interested in working with you and then you can proceed with an interviewing phase. Normally when you find freelancers from these websites, they like to conduct their business within the parameters of the platform.
Essentially communication and payments would be done through the platform so you will have to take into consideration the hiring fees. Some freelancers would be open to continuing their business with you “offline” but this is something that you will have to negotiate.
— Fiverr
Fiverr serves as the biggest freelancer marketplace. On this platform, you would create an account and then you would look for someone to hire based on what you need. Almost any service is available on this website, you just have to find someone that is reliable. Aim for the sellers that are level 2 or higher. Fiverr has very strict requirements for the higher levels which proves that those freelancers are serious about their business.
— Craigslist
— Kijiji
These two websites are great if you want to find someone local. That can be a great option as you would be able to physically meet the person you want to hire. Hiring locally can be slightly more expensive but it of course has its benefits.
— GenM
GenM is a membership based service that allows you to hire a marketing apprentice to help you with marketing tasks. Many of the students have experience in eCommerce, email marketing, social media management and so on. The right apprentice can take a huge load off of your marketing and lead generation tasks.
When you’re outsourcing, the key for a successful partnership is to make sure you have a solid foundational system that can onboard your staff so all parties are clear from the get go what’s required from them and how do they go about their tasks. You’ll want to include things like your company values, policies, systems, training videos, etc. Make it so easy that a robot could follow and still get the job done. This will eliminate frustration from all parties and keep everyone accountable. If you’re feeling nervous about giving up your tasks to someone else, it’s normal. Let’s have a chat together about it and I can help you find the best suited assistant for your business needs.
I can HELP YOU
CREATE STRUCTURE
Let’s put the business tasks to the side for a moment and talk about your life tasks. Even when the work day is done, there is still: cooking, cleaning, dog walking and so on to do. We all know how much time that takes. Well then, how about we apply the same principle of outsourcing your business tasks to outsourcing your everyday life tasks? Just let this sink in that you do not have to be rich to be able to afford a private chef or a cleaning person.
Cooking
Cooking a good and healthy meal takes at least 30 minutes per meal and this doesn’t include the time it took you to prepare the recipes, grocery shopping, etc. Sometimes with our busy lives, we would rather just go out to eat or order take out. That saves you time in a sense, but you’re still losing money. When I talk about hiring a private chef, I don’t mean to have a chef in your kitchen serving you a 5 course meal.
A more realistic idea is to have someone come in once a week to meal prep for you. Having a healthy meal prepared for an entire week for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a HUGE time saver. Can you feel the stress being washed away when you think about opening your fridge and seeing that your lunch is already ready?
To find a cook you can do a quick Google search in your area for someone that provides “personal chef” services or go back on Kijiji or Craigslist and see what you can find.
Don’t want someone in your home? There are services that will deliver you a week’s worth of healthy meals. Here is one that i’ve previously used:
MovementFood – the food was ok but i got the low carb meal options so not sure if the normal stuff is better.
And if you want to still enjoy the actual cooking but save time on prep, here are some services that i’ve tried that did the prep work for you, all you have to do it put it together and you’ll have a hot tasty healthy meal.
Goodfood – use this link and you’ll get $40 OFF on your first order
HelloFresh
FreshPrep
Cleaning
Honestly, how much time does it take you to clean? Even if you live in a smaller apartment it can take you a while in the event you get distracted or fed up and you take a long break. Think about it again, how much time and money will you save when you just hire someone that is a cleaning specialist?
A professional will take much less time than you would, and you can focus on your business. You can use the same approach as finding a cook to find yourself a reliable cleaning person.
Dog Walking
As much as it can be relaxing to walk your dog and to spend some time with them, sometimes you just don’t have the time. For the days that you have meetings all day or a ton of work to catch up on, you can visit Rover and hire a professional dog walker. Rover offers dog walking, dog sitting and other services that can make your life easier.
TIP: If you love dogs and want to make some extra cash, you can sign up to be a dog walker or sitter. Sign up here.
I hope that from this article you will feel more at ease with letting go of some of your menial tasks. The goal here is to allow yourself more time to focus on your business and your life in general. If you need some help to take the first steps, that is what my business coaching service is there for!
