When and What to Outsource in Your Business

Tune in or read the blog version below!

Hello, my loves. I am fitting in this recording session right before I head off to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a visa run.

I am currently in Indonesia on a tourist visa, which is 60 days. So my 60 days are coming up and I have to exit the country and re-enter.

Previously I was in Indonesia on a business visa, which was six months, but since I knew we were only gonna be here a few more months before heading to Mexico, I decided to just enter on a tourist visa and go to Kuala Lumpur.

I am meeting one of my friends who’s also doing a visa run from Bali, so it’s going to be a really great time. If you have any questions about the visa process in Indonesia or in other countries around the world, how it works as in digital nomad, feel free to send me a message on Instagram.

Celebrating Academy Wins

I wanted to start today’s episode by celebrating a member win from the Wanderlover Business Academy.

She emailed me saying she followed the exact framework of the Academy.

Facebook has shown me my visibility rates have skyrocketed. I have received at least two leads every day, onboarded one client last Saturday and I have three ready to start in March.

She is starting to see the power of niching down and defeating imposter syndrome. She said she also began her email list of 200 people, created a quiz as a lead magnet, and she has a bunch of leads coming in there and then upselling her high ticket offer, which is private coaching.

And one of the clients starting in March was because of that email. She said she’s in the process of writing two eBooks and she has two retreats coming up in April with a PS saying, I honestly believe your program works, and I thank you for creating it as it truly gave me the step-by-step process of getting it done.

I think the biggest thing for me was creating a revenue goal sheet and doing the launch. I’ve never done that before and I learned a lot about my business and my target market.

We are celebrating because on my goal mapping call with this member, she was unsure about the direction she wanted to take her business.

Imposter syndrome was very, very real, but she pushed through it and she has seen results. She is growing her community landing high ticket clients growing and scaling, and I am just so proud of her. So let’s all give her a round of applause and celebrate together because if she can do it, you can too.

We also had our monthly live coaching session in the Private Wanderlover Business Academy community on Facebook. And as a quick recap of what we covered in March, we covered launch strategies for a quick cash injection.

And I also provided Canva templates for the exact story templates I use when I launch something new for a short period of time.

We also went through best practices to balance work and travel for those of us fully remote. So we have a few members who quit their corporate jobs and now they are just traveling full-time.

In the beginning, to be honest, it is a struggle, right? Not a lot of people understand what it means to travel full-time.

You really have to redefine those relationships with certain important people in your lives, and you also have to redefine what travel means for yourself.

I gave three tips as to how you can better structure your time, and I will share them with you guys here. 

1. Create Structure

Number one, first and foremost, have structure. Have structure with your business and your days.

Personally, I recommend Google Calendar for managing calls and blocking off time on your calendar, so this is what you are focusing on, and you can have a weekly view of when you have to be in front of the computer.

Sometimes I’ll block off eight hours a day, three times a week to dedicate to work, so if that’s a boundary you need to set for yourself, Google Calendar is a great start.

As you all know, I also have a Passion Planner for my big picture life and business goals with a passion planner. It’s a physical journal, so I get to journal inside of it.

I get to plan out my day-to-day and really pick one thing to focus on each individual week and day.

And lastly, I use ClickUp for project management. So this is where I brain dump every single project going into my business and I have a map of who is helping me when I am launching what I am selling.

It’s in all in one platform where you can reliably understand all the moving pieces and it just really keeps you organized. So first and foremost, have structure. 

2. Prioritize Most Important Tasks

Number two, know what you are working towards for the month and prioritize all tasks related to that first. Everything else is secondary.

Usually we have so many different things that we can possibly work on at any given time and usually only a few of those are actually necessary. Those are the tasks that move your business forward.

We want to prioritize those first and we want to be clear on what those are. For example, if your goal in Q1, so by the end of March is to get one new client, then launching in March would be your first priority, right?

Everything else after that, like creating content and posting on Instagram for the sake of posting that is secondary because it doesn’t directly contribute to your bottom line. Having this filter is so important and so helpful. 

3. Say No and Establish Boundaries

Lastly, practice saying no, right? Traveling full-time is redefining what it means to travel because we also have a business to run.

Friends and family may not understand that just because we don’t report to a boss or a company, it doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do, right?

We constantly have to be on top of our work, so it’s really important to just practice saying no, getting your priorities straight and understanding when it’s really necessary to put your head down and put in the time and work. 

It’s an absolutely amazing community and I truly believe that this is why our members see such fast results and build successful businesses in such a short amount of time because they truly commit to it and they surround themselves with other people who inspire them to do better and who encourage them to take action on a weekly basis.

Plus, the guided modules are super helpful because I’m literally like, do not go on to the next module until you finish the one previously and executed on all the work.

We’re not gonna start offer creation until you have your website done, so you’re able to really hone down on what you’re focusing on for the week and be super clear without being overwhelmed.

When To Start Outsourcing?

Today’s episode was actually inspired and requested by one of our academy members, and the question was, when to start considering outsourcing or hiring full-time or part-time team members?

When you are just starting, it can be a really daunting thought, especially if you are pre-revenue because you don’t know what your return on investment is going to be, right?

So I totally understand, and this is why we’re gonna go through this episode. I’m going to share my experience with outsourcing and hiring my personal philosophy and how I run my business, and also some mistakes that I made when I was trying to expand as well as lessons for you to make the best decision for your personality and for your business.

Ultimately, there is no cookie cutter route, but I can offer my insight and what’s worked for me and my clients. 

What I Outsource 

So at The Wanderlover, we operate very lean. I do not have any full-time employees. We’ve had experience with one part-time employee, but right now we currently only have contractors.

As I’ve just found with my travel schedule and how we operate, it’s easiest when I have contractors instead of having to manage someone for an extended period of time, this is going to change in the very near future.

But overall, we’ve just tried to operate super lean and we didn’t onboard anyone full-time when we knew we couldn’t handle the bandwidth or the time commitment and how this developed to get to the point we are at today in the way beginning.

So the first project I handed off was my website. I first built my website by myself, but I quickly learned that it was not my zone of genius and there were many other people who could do it significantly better than I could.

So that was my first kind of test at how someone else could operate if I delegated website creation to them or it wasn’t creation. It was more like rebranding and improving.

I was an expert at content creation, so social media was always my zone of genius. I never really had any help with that until I introduced news, social media platforms. But in the beginning, I knew social media was what I loved.

I loved content creation, I loved editing. I was super consistent, and so I didn’t really need help with that. If social media isn’t your zone of genius, feel free to hand that off.

If you want to just provide the content and have someone else tell you exactly what you need to be taking photos of or uploading or sharing, then set the intention that you will get help with your social media in order to improve your online presence.

After my website hand off, I actually hired someone to manage my PR, so pitching to new sources to press and really get my name out there in terms of a subject matter expert and to get features in publications.

At that time, I truly believe that was the missing piece in what would drive my business forward, and I just had no time and I had no experience doing this myself. So I hired someone part-time to send out press pitches for me. 

The third thing I outsourced was my podcast editing. As soon as I started a podcast, I knew it wasn’t sustainable for me to edit every single episode to do my branding, to do my blog posts.

SoI committed to myself that every time I recorded, I just wanted a team to help me repurpose everything and put everything together.

Working off of that, I also hired an assistant to help with podcast repurposing. I knew that I had wanted every podcast episode to be transcribed into a blog post and then shared on Pinterest afterwards, and that also came in conjunction with my Pinterest Manager.

I honestly wasn’t even monetizing my podcast at that time yet, but I knew that in order for me to be consistent and grow my podcast, I would need help. 

Next, I hired an Ads Manager to manage my ads for me. I was previously running everything by myself, but at this point I saw what was working. I knew there was a return on investment. I could track my return on ads spend, and so in that case, I knew that I could be more diligent with my numbers and that I could afford to hire an ads manager next. 

After a few months of trying to manage The Wanderlover Podcast Instagram by myself, because as I said, said I loved social media, but then I realized managing two accounts was a little overwhelming.

So I also got help with social media management for The Wanderlover Podcast page. These last two happened in the past year.

I outsourced my blog content and SEO, I’m working with Fern Colab. They are writing weekly blog posts to The Wanderlover blog and optimizing my SEO.

I also contracted someone to help with my operations and systems in the backend to make sure everything is automated and everything is flowing smoothly and revamp the foundations in order for me to be able to scale. 

So up until today, these are still the only things that I have outsourced and that I have had help with.

Keep in mind, through the many years, many of these roles have changed and the agencies I’ve hired have also changed. But overall, these are the areas where I was like, you know what? I need help. 

When You Should Outsource

So practically speaking, there really is no formula as to when you should outsource. Like I can’t be like, you should hire a virtual assistant after you make your first $2,000 a month. It doesn’t work that way, right?

If there was a formula, I would definitely be sharing it with you personally. I’ve hired help even before I made revenue.

I knew that if I invested in this branch of my business, it would grow a lot faster than if I was trying to piece together everything by myself. 

Mistakes To Avoid

I’m going to be sharing three mistakes that I made and the lessons that you can learn from these mistakes.

1. Trying To Do It All

The first is trying to do everything myself in the beginning when I could afford to outsource.

In the beginning, I had savings, I had opportunities coming my way. They weren’t consistent, but I was making money and I could have hired help earlier, but I was just so stubborn and I was trying to do everything myself.

I would’ve grown a lot faster if I had the help earlier. 

2. Hiring Friends

The second mistake I made was hiring friends. So a lot of times when I had open roles, I just thought, Ooh, who? Who do I know that does ads? Or who do I know that does social media or could help me with this like virtual assistant position?

I actually hired a few of my friends and it was really awkward because I quickly realized that even though they were really good at certain things in a social aspect, work wise, it was different.

Same thing with an Ads Manager. I had hired a friend and the quality of work was just not as good as if I had gone with someone more professional for a slightly higher price point.

So really be wary about who you hire and if you are looking, looking to outsource, go for the best. 

3. Adjusting Expectations

Number three is that I always thought one person or one service would solve my problem.

I thought hiring an ads manager would automatically scale my revenue to seven figures, and I believed all of those marketing tactics, right? Like make a million dollars in 90 days by doing this.

It doesn’t exist, like business growth is slow sometimes it’s frustrating, but all of these things you’re learning are all critical steps in helping you get to your goal. 

Seek Help When Needed

So if you’re still listening to this and you’re thinking, Danielle, I still don’t know if I should outsource, when I should outsource, what I should outsource, my piece of advice for you is to seek help and hire help when you need it. Do not try to do everything yourself.

Because if you think about it, like if you are a a chiropractor, you’re not going to be building out your website, you’re not going to be running your social media channels and managing your email marketing. Your zone of genius is what you do as a chiropractor.

Same thing with your line of work in your online business. Just because you’re online doesn’t mean you also need to be running your socials, building your website, managing your email list marketing.

Think about what you’re positioning yourself as and think about where your zone of genius is.

Outsource work that doesn’t align and work that you don’t enjoy doing. And if that’s not clear enough, bottom line is to just try it. Even if you feel like you can’t afford it, even if you’re pre-revenue, just try it. It will make you a better business owner because you’re gonna practice how to delegate.

You’re going to give up control and trust that someone you’ve done your due diligence on is going to help make your business better.

When you have that trust in other people and you work together on your business vision, it’s going to drive growth, it’s going to drive sales, and you’re going to make back a return on investment.

Worst case scenario, you make the same mistakes I did. You maybe hire someone that’s not a good fit and you have kind of like a falling out or an awkward conversation.

All of those things are necessary in order to make you a better business owner. If you’re just starting out and you’re on a low budget, I understand there is so much you could and should invest in in business, you don’t know what is right.

There is a website called ripplevas.com where you can find a virtual assistant in the Philippines where with the currency conversion, they come out to a lot cheaper per hour. I can share it with you a referral link if you would like, but check them out.

You can start with like 10 hours a week and they can handle ad hoc tasks, small projects, repetitive tasks, and you can get a sense of what it’s like to be in the CEO seat and then delegate social media or a line of business to someone else, which is really exciting. 

Try it. This is a really exciting avenue to explore because once you are a master at delegating and hiring and expanding, that’s when we can scale onwards and upwards.

Let me know if you have any questions. I hope this episode was helpful and I will see you next week.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread The Wanderlover mission to those who need a dose of inspiration today.

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