How To Outsource Your Small Business In 5 Ways

You may probably ask yourself, “How can I outsource if I’m still starting up?” Well, there’s already the answer to that. The reason is when you are running a small business, you are the jack-of-all-trades where you play as the worker, manager and even the administrator all by yourself. Additionally, the more tasks you do on your own, the lesser it is to maintain the productivity of the work done and in effect, less efficient results to maintain greater profits in the near future.

Do Smart Business Owners Ask For Help?

Yes, they do and everyone should realize there would always reasons to seek help to expand expertise and opportunities. For me, I admit I’ve been through all the hassles of handling things by myself but since I have started outsourcing say, my Dragonboat business, I’ve had the best relief of having the chance to communicate with the suppliers and plan ahead of time to develop my Dragonboat service while my customer support staff stays responsible in answering queries, processing orders and payments as well.

If you’re thinking I’ve been spending too much as a start, no! Generally I’ve decided to outsource since it’s just a cheaper part of investment overseas while receiving a high quality of work in less time and effort. Now, let me show you how I’ve been able to realize that outsourcing while starting up really works:

What to Outsource?

Get to this mindset: Think of the things that you’ve done during the day and what actually gets done in the long run when you outsource it. I’ll draw an example to make this easy – emails for instance has always been part of your daily routines in the business and if you thought you have always checked on the new ones, then try to realize how your virtual staff can even filter, organize and respond to them in less time in daily basis. See? That’s a big break. Start to outsource anything that goes around a routine which cuts off at least 2 hours of your day administering to friends, customers and the likes.

When to Outsource?

There are just two things: when you know everything that has to be outsourced and when you know nothing about the tasks that you are currently outsourcing. As I said earlier, outsourcing can help you maximize the expertise in the business through the expanded efforts of your virtual staff all done at the same time. When you’re not good at graphic design for example, let an expert do that for you then it’s up for you to decide on a good, better and best outputs. Secondly, you can outsource the things in which you already are good at to give your virtual staff the right information and get things done the way you wanted. Also, checking on minimal errors on your part can be a lot easier than to implement the whole project yourself.

Why to Outsource?

It’s simply because you can do other things outside of your business but can think of more ways on how to increase profits as well. Outsourcing gives you enough time to plan, draw more targets and set better strategies for your earnings. Thus, the less work you do, the more it frees up your mind to activate your plans, grow profits easier and also enjoy the rest of your weekends.

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Outsourcing Increased My Productivitiy By 200%

Recently I’ve been testing some new ideas with “outsourcing” for Internet Business Path and from what I can gather, it’s been able to increase my productivity by at least 200%. What I did before outsourcing work to people was to create a mindmap of what the business needed in order to grow and continue to run without my input. Below is the mindmap of my businesses in it’s simplest form:

If want to create one, a really good software to use is FreeMind. It’s very easy to learn and very powerful for any business because it allows a business owner to laid down their ideas in a logical path. Since applying a mindmap to my business I’ve been able to design the system to increase my productivity by 200%.

How Do I Outsource If I Don’t Have The Money?
Firstly let me say, if you don’t have the money to afford $3 – $5US an hour to pay someone to handle your tasks that needs to be done repetitively, then you shouldn’t be in business. Okay, I’ll be fair and tell you this: I had the mindset previously to do everything myself because it was always about not having enough money. I know how you feel when you first start running an Internet business or is still a one man show, but it’s having the courage to step out of your comfort zone and learn to delegate tasks to other people to do. It’s not going to be perfect at the beginning, but with a little training, some trial and error and time you will be able to leverage your time and increase your productivity.

Outsourcing Administrative Tasks
An example that I’ve been able to outsource for $3 US an hour is the ability to get my virtual assistant to check and reply to customer service emails every second working day. Provided that I have given the guidelines and information for how to respond, I have eliminated at least 10 hours a week of my time that I used to spend replying and following up emails. When you think about it, it only costs me around $30 US for a virtual assistant to free up 10 hours of my week. Isn’t that worth the trade off when my time is worth $500 per hour? There are many other examples I could give you on how to outsource your work, you can read more of it in my Internet Business Blueprint report.

A Web Developer Will Solve All Your Website Issues
If you’ve read my business timeline, you would know that I graduated with a Computer Science degree from UNSW. Even with a degree in Computing Science I’m still not a good programmer and I choose not to be. I would rather leave the technical issues for a web developer that I can hire on an ongoing basis and pay them to work on my projects. It would take them a couple of hours to do something that would take me all week. Hence the websites I design and this blog you are reading has been designed by a web developer I hire and I simply project manage the process to achieve a great result for my clients.

A Bookkeeper Will Keep The Tax Office Happy
If you’re like me and hate seeing piles of invoices and accounts unreconciled, then I know you would hate book keeping. It’s a crucial part of your Internet business and without it there’s no way to measure how well your business finances are doing. There are systems that allow you to keep track of your business online, but not all of them are compatible with the tax laws within your country. Therefore I still purchase accounting software that is meeting Australian standards, such as MYOB Accounting. I hire a book keeper to help make sure my accounts are up to date and to generate reports to show me the financial health of the business. I hire a book keeper on a monthly basis where I can have all my paper work batched and she will enter the information at one time. She makes sure that my books are up to date and tax is paid on time and I don’t get calls from the tax office. She would save at least 20 hours + a month of book keeping that I would have had to do myself, all for the cost of a dinner with my partner.

I’m Still The Writer And Internet Marketer
I love writing and expressing my ideas on Internet Business Path and will continue to do so for a very long time. I found that it’s a great way to communicate with people from all over the world and I love receiving feedback and comments. I do this because I’m passionate about Internet business and if you know me I usually share my ideas with my friends and family most of the time. I could outsource the writing to a ghostwriter quite easily and let someone else do the marketing, though I have learnt that these are my strengths and communicating and promoting my business is my passion.

Tyrone Shum
Outsourcer