One of the reasons so many solopreneurs quit or watch their businesses fail is that they’re doing everything themselves and they eventually run the business into the ground. When we think of being self-employed, we often think it should be just “us,” like we’re out to prove something. Thing is, you CANNOT do it all on your own. (Believe me, I tried.) If you do, you won’t grow and worse, you’ll eventually burn out, both personally and professionally.
This is where you may need to let go of your ICF (“Inner Control Freak”) and start delegating and outsourcing some aspects of your business. I’ll admit; sometimes that’s easier said than done. The most frequent question that comes up when I talk to entrepreneurs about delegating and outsourcing is, “Where do I start? What should I outsource?”
The key with outsourcing is to LEVERAGE your time and resources by delegating specific things in your business to someone else who’s happy to do them for you. That said, here’s what you should begin outsourcing:
- Stuff you’re not good at.
- Stuff you don’t know how to do.
- Stuff you don’t have time to do.
- Anything outside of your brilliance/genius. (Usually stuff only YOU can do. For me, that’s coaching, speaking, writing, and marketing.)
Outsourcing the above allows you to strengthen your strengths, not your weaknesses. Here’s what I mean. For years, I’ve been really good at marketing and attracting clients, both for myself and for my own clients. It comes to me naturally; it’s my passion and my core competency. Bookkeeping on the other hand, is NOT. For years, I would beat myself up for not being able to balance a checkbook, organize my receipts, making sure stuff was paid on time, or taxes filed on time. It was a big source of shame for me.
A few years ago, I decided I was going to strengthen my weakness and get REALLY good at bookkeeping for my business. I bought a brand new copy of QuickBooks, cleared the whole weekend, pulled all the receipts, old bills, credit card receipts and tax papers out of the many shopping bags I’d stuffed under the bed and in the closet, and decided I was going to master this THING, once and for all.
Not only did it take me all weekend, but I got exasperated and anxious, depressed, and honestly, I cried more than once. You see, I was working OUTSIDE of my brilliance and “genius” work. I was trying to get really good at something I will never be really good at. And what I realized is, even if I got “really” good at it, I would only be a mediocre bookkeeper, in comparison to people whose brilliance that stuff is. Even if I conquered this weakness, I would still not master it.
I realized that if I’d spent the same time doing things I’m really good at, like making mo.ney, I would have made a LOT more than what I would have paid someone to do this for me. Using the same number of hours marketing and writing, I could have written a new info-product or created a new program, both of which would have brought in thousands and thousands of dollars. But I chose instead to get good at bookkeeping? Never again.
Today, I’ve got an entire virtual business team that works with me to help me focus on what I do best: 3 virtual assistants, one transcriptions assistant, an off-shore team to take care of miscellaneous things, an in-person assistant to run errands and file, a bookkeeping team, an accounting team, a law firm, a fulfillment house, a CD duplication company, an event planning team, travel agents, graphic designers, ghostwriter, and more.
It sounds like a lot (and I certainly didn’t start out that way), but believe me, just my 3 virtual assistants save me SO much time, at least 117 hours per month, so I can work on what I do best. That’s almost 3 weeks’ worth of 9-hour days, not even counting lunch or bathroom breaks, and I’m only counting 3 of those people, not the entire team
Wow! Maybe you CAN have more than 24 hours in a day. That is, IF you outsource. If it doesn’t come easily to me, then I delegate it and use my time doing what I’m best at. It’s the ultimate leverage.
Your Assignment:
Take out a pad of paper and make a list of specific things in your business that you could outsource or delegate to someone else:
- Stuff you’re not good at.
- Stuff you don’t know how to do.
- Stuff you don’t have time to do.
- Stuff someone ELSE will be better at.
- Anything outside of your brilliance/genius
Make another list of your strengths and then one of your weaknesses (it’s OK, we all have ‘em). Begin to focus on delegating your weaknesses and anything that’s not Client Attraction and client work. You’ll begin to see a MAJOR difference in your re-venues, often as early as within a couple of weeks. When you see more mo.ney coming in, you’ll want to outsource ALL you can and it’ll become a game really worth playing. You make mo.re, play more. Everyone wins.
That said, you may be wondering WHERE to begin finding people to outsource to so you can make Client Attraction a priority and market your business in a way that’ll give you the most returns with little effort on your part. If so, I recommend getting a copy of the Client Attraction Home Study System™. It gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid marketing systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.
© 2007 Client Attraction, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Fabienne Fredrickson, The Client Attraction Mentor, is founder of the Client Attraction System™ and www.ClientAttraction.com, the proven step-by-step program to attract more clients, make more m’oney being self-employed, while having more time off to enjoy it all. To receive your F.R.E.E. Audio CD by mail and get weekly how-to articles on attracting more clients, visit www.ClientAttraction.com.
