Have you been dreaming about bringing some help into your business? Maybe someone to take care of your bookkeeping, create and schedule your social media posts, pack orders or even clear out your inbox?
Maybe you already have some help, like a virtual assistant, but you know you’re not using them effectively because you’re not quite sure what to hand over or how not to be the bottleneck in your business. I know for me, this is a big one. I have support, but it’s taken this coach some time to coach herself into being a good delegator of tasks.
If either sound like you, or you know in the future, you’re going to want to scale up and will need to outsource at least some of your business tasks and responsibilities; this episode is for you.
I have the key to wadding through your task list and picking out just the activities, tasks or responsibilities that should belong to you so you can hand the rest off to someone else.
Sounds pretty great, right?
Let me tell you from personal experience, it absolutely is! The joy of ending the day knowing that someone else has just ticked off a big chunk of the workload in your business is pretty special. Of course, it’s even better if you have also been a hyper-focused list ticker and not just faffing about. But, of course, if you want to pay someone to increase your faff time, that is entirely up to you.
You would not be listening to my podcast right now if I was doing everything myself. This podcast is opening me up to an entirely new audience, and for my OG profit lovers, it’s another way to consume my business musings easily.
I didn’t have the time to do everything myself, the process of writing, editing, uploading, creating images, scheduling, emailing, adding to the blog… It’s a lot of work. Not to mention the initial set-up, which was a steep learning curve.
I tried it myself and quickly realised that it was never going to happen if it was up to me, so I handed everything but the scriptwriting to my content creator, and just a few weeks later, we were ready to launch.
So how do I figure out what to outsource and when? And can you use this method too?
Yes! You sure can!
All I do is focus on what I call the Queen Profit Bee role in my business. If you know anything about bees, you know that the Queen Bee has only two roles in the hive; she produces a chemical scent, and she lays eggs.
The worker bees do everything else. She doesn’t fix her own snacks, brush her body fuzz, she doesn’t wash her wings or clean the toilets. Instead, she focuses on her unique skills and only those skills. That keeps her fresh, happy and energised to keep the hive going.
Ready to figure out how to be your own Queen (Profit) Bee?
In today’s episode, you’re going to hear about my quick four-step trick to figuring out your QPB role including what needs to be outsourced. Even if you’re not financially ready to outsource this task will get encourage you to think a little differently.
Want to listen to the episode? Click here
When we start in business, we usually do everything ourselves because we have time but no money. Then, when money starts to roll in, we figure out we need to be marketing more, there are new offers we want to create and bookkeeping we never thought we would need to do… all of a sudden.. We have no time.
What should happen is as we make money, we plan to buy back more time by employing someone or outsourcing. Unfortunately, what often happens is business owners don’t plan for that point. Instead, they plan to make enough to survive, so they underprice, discount and have no clue how much business costs to run. Does this sound familiar?
The Queen Profit Bee exercise is something I do with one on one clients and Members Club. It’s one of the fan favourites because it’s simple and effective. It’s also an absolute must-do if you want to scale your business without putting yourself into an early grave from exhaustion.
Everyone talks about productivity and getting sh** done. Here’s the catch with that, you can be the most productive business owner ever, but if your focus is on the wrong activities, you’re not going to make progress. If you have no goals and you are outsourcing random stuff with no real plan, you will waste both the investment and the time you free up.
You will do a lot of busy work with no real, measurable impact. Pointless.
Busy work for you might constantly be creating plans you never action, moving from different platforms and systems all the time because you keep finding something you think might be better. I did this a lot with task managers; I kept looking for the elusive unicorn solution instead of just getting on with the tasks in the task manager.
You might be someone who is always over-servicing clients or maybe doing free consults and sessions. It sure does make you feel busy, but it’s not focused work.
Shift your thinking from productive to focused; focus comes when you combine productivity with a vision, goals and motivation. When you combine those, you start working on the activities, tasks and projects that will take you towards your vision by working step by step on your goals.
When you make that mindset shift, you start to see the tasks you’re doing each day as either goal focused or just day to day running of your business. It then becomes pretty obvious what you should be letting go of…
Here is a quick, actionable task you can do to find your Queen Profit Bee role easily.
Grab a big piece of paper, a whiteboard or chalkboard, or you can do this in a document. Then, brain dump everything you do in your business, from answering emails to creating new products and services. You’re dumping literally everything.
Next, grab a green pen or highlight in green everything that you and only you can do. Highlight the things that use your unique expertise. You’re going to need to push ego aside here because while you might think you’re the only one who can be the photographer, graphic designer, customer service person, bookkeeper etc… You’re not.
Look at the list of everything that isn’t highlighted in green; I bet it’s quite a big list. Put in order what you want to outsource from your list, and even if you can’t afford to outsource it right now, find out how much it’s going to cost so you can add it to your cash flow.
Yes, I just used a filthy word, cash flow…
Let me side-note here for one moment; I was on a call with a client this morning who has 10x her business so $3k to $4k a month to now $35k to $40k a month. She hated every single minute of cash flow forecasting and could not understand why I would make her do it when she didn’t have huge expenses or sales. Fast forward a few years and guess who uses their cash flow all the time to make decisions?
Yes, she does.
She still asks me to review her cash flow and make sure she is on the right path, that she hasn’t missed anything, but she can make the decisions herself knowing exactly what the impact will be on profits and how much she can pay herself from her business. She plans and tracks her cash flow.
So, back to outsourcing and find your Queen Profit Bee role.
When you’re looking at the list, what tasks could someone else do faster, better and cheaper than you could? That will also give you an idea of what to hand off first.
You also want to think about how much you could be making if you were selling, not admin-ing or doing stuff you’re not skilled at. I catch myself doing things all the time that I could outsource for $30 per hour, and with that hour I could go make $500. Like everything else in business you have to choose to be proactive, and that means paying attention and making changes, not just passively sucking time away.
My Queen Profit Bee role is coaching, creating resources for Members Club, planning funnels, tracking numbers, coming up with content ideas, writing and recording podcasts and videos, and showing up live on Instagram. That is what I uniquely bring to my business. Everything else can be assigned to someone else so I can focus on what I uniquely bring to the business.
Once you have your list of tasks to let go of and an idea of costs, you have adjusted your cash flow or even re-calculated the extra you need in sales to cover the cost schedule it in as a goal. Pick a month and work towards it.
*If you use the Profit Lovers Plan and Track, you can add it to the Annual Planner tab*
Outsourcing is one of those things you will never find the money for; you have to be clear on what you need, how much it will cost and how you’re going to pay for it. That means planning for it, setting goals and dates to work towards.
I encourage you to know your numbers when you’re outsourcing because a lot of those fancy big businesses you see celebrating their million dollars in sales or hundreds of thousands of Insta followers are making very little in profits.
I have seen many a million-dollar business that has outsourced everything because that’s what the experts told them to do. They suggest you to work in your zone of genius, say no to anything that doesn’t light you up. The result of that is businesses with big sales making next to nothing in profit.
If you don’t know your numbers, what often happens is you grow your business, but you don’t grow your profits because it all goes to paying everyone you have outsourced work to. So you end up with a cost and expense heavy business that relies on a big bunch of contractors, leaving you with next to nothing for yourself.
Does that mean you should only bring on a few contractors to help you?
No, it means bring on as many as you need to give you the freedom you want while also managing your numbers so you can pay both them and yourself.
Now, if you’re listening to me and wishing you had the skill set to figure out cash flow and to set proper sales goals that include taxes and expenses and a nice salary for you. If you’re dreaming of outsourcing but need help putting the wheels in motion, you might want to get on the Members Club waitlist. We cover all that stuff and much more.
If your already a Profit Lovers members, you can log in and complete the Focus Kit; it will step you through finding your Queen Profit Bee role, including an amazing tracker that shows you where your time is going, what tasks need to be outsourced and what tasks need to be scrapped.
On the hunt for an AH-MAH-ZING task manager now? Click here to sign up to Click Up!