When Outsourcing, This Is the One Thing You Never Want to Do Have too many employees and too little funding? There's only one person to blame...
By Courtney Tarrant Edited by Bill Schulz
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Recently, I was feeling overwhelmed, overworked, over-tired and over it. I was doing all the right things, but I felt super lackluster about the tasks I should be completing. Like most of us, I began to hire them out.
I was looking to hire someone at every turn to fix every problem I had.
Related: Money Well Spent
I hear this all the time with my clients and entrepreneurial friends: Too busy? Hire an assistant. Hire the wrong assistant? Hire a staffing agency. Not enough clients to justify your new team? Hire a marketing agency. So the story goes, until you're thousands of dollars in debt with no-one left to fix your financial woes.
I realized that hiring out our problems will actually avalanche until we address the core problem we aren't willing to face. What I came to find is that if we can understand the basics of our business, brush up on most of the operational procedures, we can hire one core fraction of our business out and begin to soar.
What's the one thing you NEVER want to do again?
Related: 7 Problems Preventing Your Business From Being Profitable
For me, the biggest pain was a lack of new clients. I had become complacent on referrals and was not eating my own cooking. I run a boutique Facebook ads agency, so I began to run ads. Low and behold, my agency is now at nearly full capacity again.
One of my friends is a writer, and when she actually began writing articles for herself, instead of just her clients, she also began to go viral. We must remember that our "cooking" or our "medicine" will work for us too.
I also noticed that once my agency was booming, and the pressure of sales was reduced, my core problem surfaced: It was the lack of support I felt from my team. Each morning I would wake up and think: Why isn't my team taking initiative?
In order to solve this problem, and create harmony in my business, I had to first accept that this was something I could not outsource. Leadership isn't something to be hired out, or brushed off as an unimportant task of the day — it's the core principle of entrepreneurship.
My anti-outsourcing mission statement
I brought my team into my vision. I allowed them to see where we are going and their roles in the trajectory of Courtney Tarrant Media. By sharing this vision, the team stepped up because they felt like they were part of the change versus them just having a job to do.
I created Core Values that we now, as a team, run all of our decisions through. Our values are simple, yet effective: Radical support, radical transparency, radical responsibility = radical results.
But, I didn't do a one time meeting and brush my team off. I blocked off a portion of my day, everyday, to reinvigorate and inspire my team based on these values and my vision.
What is your business's core problem?
In 2021, we want to be as strategic as possible with our investments. By identifying the one problem you will outsource and invest in, you can then create a plan to utilize your current team and resources to focus on the other 3-4 core areas of your business.
That's why I'm choosing to focus on strategic investments. To me, a strategic investment is something that scares you a little bit. It's something that you know will take your business further than you could take it by yourself. It's typically not cheap, but it's the very thing you will be overjoyed you did come this time next year.
I want you to sit down and ask the December 2021 version of yourself, "What will you be glad you invested in by this time next year?"
Related: Five Things To Consider When Hiring Your First Employees
