Outsourcing is always a topic that pops up at networking events because quite frankly you can’t always do everything and if you can, you would have to have superpowers to do it all at a 100% standard. Whilst I am a believer in “Done Is Better Thank Perfect” your VAT return, website SEO, legal letters and T&Cs don’t have to come into these categories. If a job needs to be done to a specific standard, then outsource. You can also lose a lot of time to tasks that you don’t enjoy, they always take ten times longer and even then you end up doing them badly! (Yup I’m talking about housework and cleaning here!)
Outsourcing involves paying another company to do a task for you. Usually, tasks that take up valuable time or simply ones you have no expertise in, or in my case bring me no joy! Outsourcing can be much cheaper than hiring a full-time employee as you can use companies/individuals on an adhoc basis as and when you need them. Here are some outsourcing tips for tasks you can easily take off your hands.
5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Outsource Today:
- Accounts: We are not all maths people! But do you know that there are individuals out there that love maths! Using small business accounting services is the quickest and easiest way to save you time and probably money in the long run. Outsourcing your accounting can help grow your small business, by having a proactive, all-encompassing accounting service from bookkeeping, VAT advice and payroll your small business can tap into a wider range of financial resources and they will see things before you get to that point in your business, stopping nasty surprises in the long run.
- Legal Support: Lots of small businesses join the FSB (Federation of Small Business) purely for the legal support on offer because quite frankly unless you are a legal professional it’s a literal minefield! Data protection, eCommerce laws, trading marking, employment law …. even writing this is making my head hurt. Definitely worth outsourcing!
- Cleaning: I hate housework and as such, it takes me ages to do one little thing! I also get sidetracked and a cleaning task suddenly becomes a room renovation as sometimes a repaint is easier than cleaning! I waste time, resources and headspace thinking and worrying about domestic cleaning. A tidy space equals a tidy mind so of all the outsourcing tips – hiring a cleaner has to be the golden one! From washing the windows to buffing your engineered wood flooring a cleaner will do it all!
- Social Media Marketing: Social media can be the biggest time suck! You pop online to share some valuable insight for your followers and suddenly you have watched a video of a cat playing the piano and had to have a word with yourself about booking a walk a llama session! (True Story!) But there are plenty of agencies and individuals who will take the stress, planning, and scheduling out of your social media leaving you to enjoy the fruits of your marketing, be more organic, and have more time to do the important things.
- Admin: Virtual assistants (VA) can literally do everything and everything you need from the comfort of their own home/office taking the stress out of tasks that don’t bring you joy and rewarding you with more time to do the things that you do like. Answering your business phone, most of us hate answering the phone, and incoming calls interrupt other tasks, affect your workflow and eat into valuable time. Whilst you are at it why not get your VA to organise and reply to your emails too? They can easily clear out the spam, diarise events and reply to stuff leaving just the important emails for you to sift through.
These are just a handful of options, nowadays you can pretty much outsource any task you can think of and that includes ironing! Do you outsource any of your life admin or business tasks? Do you have any handy outsourcing tips?
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