Outsource: 3 Areas for Growth by Laura Licursi
A New Year…even a new decade is upon us. Resolutions and goals have been set, with a clean slate and over 10 months to bring it all to fruition. What are some of your top goals for this year? New resolutions? Things you know you MUST do? (And some that you know you don’t need to be doing?)
The beauty of a new year is that we can take what we’ve learned from the past and use it to create a plan of action to go farther and faster than we did before. The only problem with most “goal setting” is that we typically plan for the year, and a year is a lot of time. At least it seems like it is in January. And maybe even in March or June.
But once the Fall rolls around, we take a look at our goals and plans, and sometimes we notice we’re not where we should be. By September, we realize Q4 is right around the corner and it’s GO time. Now we realize we may not reach those goals. Then what?
So you might be asking, “What can I do to stay ahead of the game”?
Outsource some of your non-essential tasks.
First start with breaking those goals down into smaller, more manageable pieces. I started my year off by reading “12-Week Year” by Brian Moran. Now, I’ve always set quarterly goals rather than 12-month goals, but this book highlights some great points and advantages to treating each quarter as your “year.” I highly recommend it if you find yourself falling short of your goals each year.
I highlight 3 goals I want to accomplish each quarter, then break them down to one per month. This helps me laser-focus my efforts on one goal at a time, definitely better than trying to do 3 things halfway.
For example, last year my third quarter goals were:
- Clean up my Quickbooks. Anything financial is not my passion (or anything I’m particularly good at) and it’s been bogging me down for years.
- Find help for my course launch. I’ve been in the virtual assistant space for 23 years, 18 as a virtual assistant and 5 as the owner of an agency. I know this space inside and out, and I love helping others find their passion in this industry. Even though I had created an online course to help others build their businesses, I was having trouble getting it off the ground.
- Find help while I worked through the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program. I hadn’t yet been accepted into the Fall Cohort but was planning for it anyway. I knew it would be difficult to juggle the class and the agency, and knew I needed some help for our clients while I was out.
Now, these were 3 pretty big areas I needed to cover, but I also knew they were areas I NEEDED to cover to stay aligned with my goals and vision. So I made decisions and took the following action to outsource my non-essential tasks:
Hired an expert in Quickbooks to help me. It’s never easy to admit as a business owner that we can’t do something. I mean, if I had really concentrated my efforts on this cause, I’m sure I could have done a better job than I did to this point. But as I mentioned, it’s not my passion or desire to do this when there are so many other things to do. I had it to the point of “getting by,” which honestly just wasn’t cutting it. So I outsource-d it to Sherrington Financial Fitness, and I couldn’t be happier. Sherrington’s team jumped in and cleaned it all up for me. Sherry’s expertise was pivotal in helping me break down key areas in my financials that allow me to get even more granular with my reporting and goal setting. And, that “fog” that was always there because it’s something I knew I had to do has now been lifted.
Hired an online course integrator. Again, I took a course to create a course (as silly as that might sound, but believe me there are a LOT of moving pieces to it) and spent 6 months building it. I spent another 8 months launching it and learning more and more each time, but I knew if I hired an expert to help, I would get to where I wanted to be much faster than working through it myself. Akande Davis with Digital Pew has been instrumental in helping me work through this process.
Hired 2 Client Relations Managers. Now, this was a tough decision for me, just like it was when I started the agency and had someone other than me representing my company. But I knew it was a position that I had to fill, not only to take care of our clients while I was out but also to continue on if I am going to keep growing my agency.
When I look back, I made a lot of changes to better my business. Some were a stretch at times, but the only way I could make progress and concentrate on what I needed to do to better myself and grow my business was to have faith that adding to my team in these areas were steps in the right direction. And the peace of mind that I now have, knowing that these areas are being taken care of so I can continue to grow and lead my company (as Mastercard would say) are priceless.
My advice to you is this: stop being afraid to let go. Just because you can do everything doesn’t mean you should do everything. Decide what YOU need to concentrate on to continue to lead and grow your business, and outsource the other areas to an expert. You’ll thank me one day. If you’re not sure where to start, I’d be happy to offer some advice. Schedule a call with me today. Here’s to next year!
Let EVA help while you navigate the new year and world.
