I’m going to start off The Green Room with some advice that I’ve only recently allowed myself to take, but something I think we all should be doing more of – giving ourselves a break and outsourcing.
I am a firm believer in the mantra that I’d rather work harder doing something I’m good at (blogging, writing, networking) to hopefully earn more money to pay someone else to do the things I’m not so good at (cooking – hey having a happy work/life balance is as big a deal as streamlining your business – accounting, graphic and web design).
Gareth’s role in the business has also evolved greatly over the past 6 months. Finally earning enough money to suppport us both means that the accounting, website coding and IT support/technical stuff has come on leaps and bounds in the latter part of last year. What would be the benefit of me sweating it out, trying to do all these things myself, when I can simply have Gareth as my full time lackey to do them…and he can do these things a hell of a lot better than I ever could.
Your branding and graphic design is also another big area which I think should be outsourced. As Jasmine Star once wrote, “Just because you can use photo shop to make a logo yourself, doesn’t mean you should.” The first big thing I spent a significant amount of money on for my business was my branding. Best thing I ever did.
Sure, not everyone is going to be in the position to be able to afford to pay someone else to do all the bits you don’t like doing (or can’t do well) right now, but I certainly think it’s a goal worth working towards. Learning to ‘let things go’ and accept help has been a massive challenge for me (control freak much!?) but overall my quality of life is now much better and my business has benefited enormously.
I encourage you to think about areas of your business (or life!) that you either dislike or struggle with, and ponder that if you could redress the balance, which of these areas would you like to outsource.
