How do I know when it’s time to outsource? How do I factor it into my pricing? I am way too scared to give up creative control in my business. These are all normal questions and mindset blocks that come along with the idea of outsourcing. Here I go into how to know it’s time to outsource in your business.

I get it, our businesses are our babies, we think we’re the only ones who can do anything, which leads to us doing EVERYTHING. We wear ALL the hats and do ALL the things, which let’s be real.. Leads to burnout. I mean how could it not?! It just does.

I get asked all the time “Rachel, how are you doing it all, like you just had a baby.. How do you keep up?” And my answer is.. I DON’T DO IT ALL ALONE! I have an awesome team that helps me so I can be the visionary in my business and keep up with creating good content FOR YOU.

Here I’m going to break down some of the hottest questions about outsourcing and some mindset blocks that surround it as well. So if you’re ready to free up some time in your life while still scaling your business, this one’s for you!

What is outsourcing?

Outsourcing is when you hire either an employee or contract workers to help you with the tasks in your business. These are usually tasks that are tedious, or take up a lot of your time to do, or are tasks that you simply do not like doing! (hello bookkeeping + taxes) 

And what it essentially means for you in terms of running your business is that it frees up time for you to focus on the bigger tasks and projects that actually help move the needle in your business to help it grow.

For example, sitting and responding to emails all day just to keep up is NOT going to move the needle for you. Also, sitting in front of your computer all day editing is NOT going to help you scale your business.

What does outsourcing do for my business?

I know it’s hard to give up control over these things, but what it does is it allows you to open up more time in your day to free up space for you to focus on the biggest projects that will help you GROW and scale your business to get to the level you are wanting to achieve 

I like to think of it this way: what do you charge for 1 hour of your time for your services? Have that number in your head, and now think.. How much more money could I be making if I had more free hours in the day? 

For example, if I’m spending 2 hours on my emails, and 5 hours editing in one day, how much business and money am I missing out on by not having the time to book and fill my services? 

Vs when I can outsource those tasks to someone else, I am now allowing myself to free up some time to book my services to help generate more revenue.

See how that works? 

What are some things I can outsource?

You can outsource anything that takes up a lot of time or are tasks that you do not enjoy doing.

They should be tasks that free up your time so you can put your energy and focus into things that you love and be the visionary in your business. 

Some Things you can Outsource are: 

• Photo editing
• Blogging
• Email and guide creation
• Social media management
• Pinterest
• Copywriting
• Creating graphics 
• Uploading + Organizing galleries
• Album creation
• Monitoring analytics
• SEO
• Content repurposing 

Even if outsourcing any of these things meant that you could improve your quality of work in those tasks, OR have more time to focus energy into your marketing plan, OR book just even 1 extra wedding or project from it.. It’s all worth it in my opinion!

How do I know if I’m ready for outsourcing?

The answer is.. Probably long before you were actually “ready”. You can be at any level and any point in your business to start outsourcing. In fact, I’m a big believer in that the more you outsource, the more you grow! 

An example of that would be, say you don’t exactly know all the right Pinterest strategies you need to grow and manage your account, at any level, it is going to be majorly beneficial for you to have someone who DOES know how to utilize Pinterest to help you grow on that platform. It’s amazing to have people helping you on your team who know MORE than you do, because let’s be real, you can’t know it or do it all. You just can’t! So it’s OKAY to rely on others to help you. In fact, I think that is just a smart growth strategy.

Some ways that you will know when you’re ready to start outsourcing are:

When tasks are taking up too much of your time

This means you’re spending WAY too much time doing tedious tasks that you could be focusing your energy elsewhere. This could give you time to do tasks that could actually generate you more income.

When you’re stressed out from doing specific tasks

We all are guilty of this. We have our favorite tasks and favorite things to do, along with our least favorite things to do. These get pushed to the back burner and keep getting pushed back and back until the very last minute. Then you’re rushing to get it finished and hate every second of doing it. 

Think about the tasks that are causing you stress or you keep putting off. Write them down and ask yourself why they cause you stress, and if they are tasks that can be outsourced. The answer will most likely be yes you can. 

When you simply can’t keep up with the workload

When you are overwhelmed and need to offload your work onto some help this is a sign! Ideally, you will start to incorporate outsourcing before you hit this point, but for most of us, it takes hitting this breaking point to START outsourcing.

Where do I find people to hire to outsource?

There are a few different places you can utilize to find a VA or someone who specializes in what you’re looking for. My favorite places to find contractors are Fiverr, Upwork, and Instagram or Facebook groups.

My biggest suggestion is that you are very specific in the job description of what you’re looking for, how many hours you’re looking for, what they specialize in, and that you create a seamless onboarding process with them. You’ll need to get clear on creating SOP’s which are standard operating procedures, so that way it’s an easy process getting started and being most efficient. 

Another setback I hear people say is: Well, the quality won’t be as good as I want it to be. Which, again, is a valid feeling. BUT in my experience and knowledge, the quality of that job will most likely actually be way better. 

This is for a couple of reasons: 

1. Because they are more of experts in that specific field and know what they are doing. 
2. Because they will most likely be way more efficient and can get something done in 30 minutes that would take you 5 hours to do. 

So, you can actually improve your quality of work if you are outsourcing it vs if you tried to do it yourself.

How do I factor it into my pricing?

I think one of people’s biggest setbacks is not wanting to pay someone to help with outsourcing, which again, I totally understand! But let’s try and focus on getting you past that mindset block so you can quit telling yourself that limiting belief that is holding you back from scaling. Get rid of that voice inside your head that is telling you that you’re not ready enough, not good enough, not in demand enough… STOP IT!

Again, like I said, you can be at any point in your business to start outsourcing and it can be ANYTHING. In fact, it can even be something that is non-work related. Just as long as it helps you both grow your business, and free up some time for you to focus on the bigger things.

You might be listening and thinking, “But I can’t afford to pay someone to help me with that” and I’m here to help you with that!

How to pay for outsourcing

The best way to help cover outsourcing is to factor it into your pricing for your services. You can do this if you have a killer client experience and deliver people a great experience for your services. As well as if you are starting to be in demand for what you do. 

For example, if you are booking 20 senior sessions a year, You can start by Outsourcing your editing and increasing your senior session rate by $100 or however much it costs for you to outsource that session. That way you are just incorporating the outsourced rate into your service rate and are not losing out on any money. Instead you are getting so much more free time back to put into your marketing plan and your marketing strategy to attract and book more senior sessions. This is so that you can make more money for your hourly rate versus sitting at a computer all of those hours editing.

Again, the more energy you can put into doing things that will bring you more money per year the better! Do you see how that works and how that can really help you free up more time in your life and business and also generate more income?

This all comes along with factoring all of your expenses into your prices for your services and what you are charging. You want to make sure at the end of the day you are profitable in your business so that is why it is extremely important to sit down and write down all of your expenses that come out of each package that you offer.

Start Small

You don’t have to go ALL in. In fact, I suggest testing the waters to see how you like it and maybe only offload half of your work so you’re not going all in at once. Then once you get more comfortable with the process, you can increase the workload you are outsourcing and start to outsource more tasks as well. 

This will help you not be so overwhelmed as you’re starting with outsourcing and then you can just dip your toes in to see how you like it. Just get really clear on your onboarding process and creating your SOP’s so that you can be most efficient with your time and your VA’s time.

I think a lot of people’s perception on Outsourcing is that you end up being hands-off in your business and not in control of anything, which is actually the complete opposite. When you are outsourcing or managing a team, you are allowing yourself to free up space to become the visionary in your business. This is so that you can be the creative mind behind it all and others can just help you execute those tasks. So when you switch your mindset to think that way, it’s much easier! 

Final Thoughts

I hope you are inspired to get the wheels turnin’ and start thinking about some ways you can outsource to SCALE your business and help you generate more revenue all while getting some more of your life back.  I’m a big outsource lover and hope this post helped break down some barriers of the thoughts around outsourcing.

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