How to Outsource Your Weaknesses So You Can Focus on Your Business Strengths

By Sujan Patel

Entrepreneurs are accustomed to wearing multiple hats to keep growing and scaling their businesses while keeping as much money as possible in their pockets. But doing it all on your own could actually be costing you money. Spending too much of your time on bookkeeping when it’s really not your zone of genius could mean hours wasted on a single task. Meanwhile, a qualified bookkeeper could do it all within an hour or two and get the job done efficiently and correctly the first time.

If you’re still not convinced to try outsourcing, remember that chances are high you’re already using some form of outsourcing in your business. According to Deloitte, 53% of businesses are outsourcing IT functions and 69% are outsourcing technology needs to cloud providers.

Fortunately, it’s not difficult to outsource nearly everything in your business, from inventory and fulfillment to lead generation. However, the path to finding your first contractor and successfully outsourcing is more difficult to tackle. Here’s how to get started.

Focus on your weaknesses

First things first: if you’re just starting out in your business journey, choose a business that suits your strengths from the start. If you’re a marketer first and a product person second, try dropshipping to blend the best of both worlds. Or, if you’re talented at content strategy but less motivated to focus on marketing, hire a content marketer to bring your vision to fruition. The idea is to identify your weaknesses and most dreaded tasks and outsource them so you can focus on areas that best suit your talents.

Get rid of time-wasting activities

However, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should waste your time focusing on it in your company. Outsource any tasks that can be done relatively cheaply, such as data entry or collecting contact information for leads. It’s not difficult to find a virtual assistant either locally or overseas, and get more done at a relatively inexpensive rate. Allocate your newfound freedom to focus on the things that really move your company along, such as in-person networking or strategizing a marketing campaign.

RELATED: 4 Home Business Tasks You Should Be Outsourcing

Set your budget

You don’t need a huge budget to start outsourcing your weaknesses and time wasters. For example, a few hours of data entry might only cost $20 on a site like UpWork. Focus on one task to outsource, and estimate how many hours it will take to get the job done. From there, it’s about squeezing your budget and focusing on making up the cost in other areas. And as your business grows, you can reinvest the money back into your business and outsource even more.

Look for qualified contractors

Qualified contractors and freelancers are everywhere and are eager to handle your tasks. Word-of-mouth referrals are a great place to start, but you can also use freelancing platforms to find the right contractor for the job. Sites like Growth Geeks are perfect when outsourcing marketing duties. Meanwhile, Bench works well for bookkeeping and UpWork is ideal for anything from data entry to creating email marketing campaigns.

Assign a small test

A word-of-mouth referral and glowing online reviews can give you some insight into your contractor’s capabilities, but shouldn’t replace a series of basic tests. Assign a small project to see how well your contractor does with it. If they do a decent job, but it’s not as thorough as you’d like, talk them through your expectations and exactly what you need. If they can rise to the occasion, chances are they can be coached through the process and run with your outsourcing needs.

RELATED: 7 Freelancers That Can Benefit Any Business