Outsourcing budget

Outsource on a Budget

How many hours a day do you work?  If youíre like many self-employed business owners, the answer may lie somewhere in the realm of 40-80 and that is often while taking care of children, pets, a spouse, and other family members.  It can be a lot of stress to own a business and handle every single task and responsibility.  That is just one reason to consider outsourcing ñ save your sanity and spend more time focusing on you and your family. 

Another reason is that your time may be better spent focused on particular tasks while letting other specialists handle tasks that are time consuming or perhaps beyond your list of skills.  ìBut I donít have enough income to outsource,î you say.  You might be surprised.  Hereís how to outsource on a budget:

Step 1.  Calculate your net profits.  Net profits are your total or gross profits less your expenses.  You can use your net profits for the past month or the past year, which ever makes more sense. 

Step 2.  Determine how many hours a week you work.  Do you really work 80 hours a week?  Track your time for a week or two, be diligent, and see how many hours you spend working.

Step 3.  Divide your net profits for a month or year by the number of hours you worked.  If youíre using a year of net profits, multiply the number of hours you work in a week by the number of weeks you worked last year.  If you worked 40 hours a week all year long it would be 40-52 or 2080.  Assuming you made 40,000 and worked 2080 hours your hourly value would be about $19.00/hour.

Step 4.  Determine what your more profitable tasks are and what your least profitable tasks are.  Look at the tasks that take you the longest to complete.  Perhaps updating and posting content to your website takes you three hours a week and while it certainly helps your business and your SEO, it doesnít directly generate profits like consulting with clients does.  In this scenario it would make sense for you to fill those hours you normally spend updating your website with consulting time and hire or outsource the website tasks. 

Step 5.  Find and interview candidates for the task.  A great place to start is right in your own backyard.  Do any clients or associates know someone who might be interested in the job?  Youíre outsourcing so youíre not responsible for taxes or benefits.  Compare rates, experience, and references. 

Step 6.  Once you have a candidate in mind, you may want to hire on a trial basis just to make sure the set up is working for the both of you. 

Step 7.  Create outsourcing goals.  If your goal is to make more money, then spend your newly found free time toward that goal.  If your goal is to find more time in the day to spend with your family, then hire toward that goal and spend your newly found free time with your family.

The key to outsourcing on a budget is to start small, itís fine to outsource one task at a time.  Pay attention to your outsourcing goals and the tasks you outsource.  If it takes you 10 hours to design a webpage but it only takes an expert 1 hour, depending on your hourly value chances are your money is better spent outsourcing that job.