7 - Outsourcing for Coaches

Hello and welcome to the business of executive coaching. So I'm experimenting today with not having a formal intro. Do you prefer the intro music or do you like me just getting to the point? Drop me a message@elliotlucent.com and let me know what you like better so I can adjust to to what works best. So, I'm Ellie Scarf. I'm a senior executive Coach with over 17 years experience running coaching businesses. I'm working as a coach in house, being an associate coach, employing teams of associate coaches and more. So I know the coaching business alongside my coaching practice. I mentor coaches who are growing their coaching businesses to help them build sustainable, profitable and enjoyable. That's most important, enjoyable businesses and to help them get there faster than they would be able to on their own. So, welcome to episode seven where I'm going to talk all about outsourcing and specifically I want to talk about how to outsource as an executive or leadership coach. So when you start a business, it's fair to say there are some pretty significant pressures on you. One is the pressure to get clients. Another is the pressure to make money and increase your cash flow. You also can tend to feel like you have to have everything under control right from the start. There are so many pressures. Have you felt that all of these shoulds start popping up along with these pressures? Things like, I should know what to do. I should be able to build a website from scratch without any instructions. I should feel confident and I should be able to convey that confidence to the 100 clients that I should have straight away. But as you know, because you're coaches, we need to stop with the shoulds. The shoulds are unhelpful. The shoulds are unrealistic, and they certainly don't help us get to where we want to be. The shoulds can also make us feel like asking for help or outsourcing is a failure of some sorts, almost like a moral failure. So today I want to give you permission not to know everything that's okay. And to be able to consider that sometimes the best investment you can make in your business is bringing in someone who can do something better and quicker than you can. That will then give you the freedom to spend time where you can have the most impact in your business. I'm also here to give you permission, with some conditions, that it's okay to identify things that you really don't like doing and to outsource those to make sure that your business is joyful and efficient, which is going to make your business more sustainable in the long term. So why outsource? I think we should outsource to buy back time. I think we should outsource to spend more time on important tasks. I think we should outsource to keep our joy and sanity. And I think we should outsource for leverage where we can't possibly do the volume of work that we need to do. Do you have to outsource? Absolutely not. So in my program, the Corporate to Coach Blueprint, I share the foundations of a business, a thriving coaching business, and I share how you can do it all yourself, but you don't have to it would be remiss of me to start this conversation about outsourcing without a nod to the gender politics and discrepancies that I notice when it comes to outsourcing. So women are much more likely to feel guilty about outsourcing or that paying for help is some sort of failure to be perfect as a woman or as a business person. I think that women are also more likely to judge themselves and to be judged externally if they choose to outsource domestic tasks to give them time and energy for business building. In my opinion, the only way we can break this this pattern, if you like, is to feel the discomfort and do it any anyway, so I'm going to share some thoughts on domestic outsourcing a bit later on in this podcast. But I want to acknowledge that this is a harder ask for women because we are expected to do it all. So I remember my my grandmother who one of my very favorite people and I was very close to her, but she was always completely baffled that my husband cooked the dinner. And the subtext of of her bafflement, I think was not that my husband cooked, but that I let him cook the dinner and that I didn't realize, or maybe maybe that I wasn't sufficiently grateful for this unicorn that I had somehow ended up married to who was willing to cook the dinner. She was also shocked that sometimes I traveled for work and my husband would look after our daughter, but she wouldn't have batted an eyelid. And she didn't because it did go both ways when my husband was traveling and I was looking after my daughter. So just note as you are reflecting on your feelings around outsourcing, if you are a woman, that there are stories and there is baggage that is beyond you, that is playing out here and to keep that in mind when you are going through your decision making process. So leaving gender aside, how do you know when you're ready to outsource? This is actually a really tricky one Because I think that you need to walk a really fine line with outsourcing. Between outsourcing to create space to be able to do what you need to do to grow your business. So building that space proactively and then on the other side of that fine line is outsourcing too early and spending money that you don't have. And the truth is that in the first few years of your coaching business, you will likely be balancing that as you go through. And honestly, by the time you feel 100% ready to outsource it, it is probably too late to do it easily and probably too late to save you from the burnout that you may already be experiencing. So some questions to ask yourself as you are thinking about making the decision to outsource could include things like, will outsourcing this task give me more time to spend on revenue generating activities that I believe will lead to more paying work? So outsourcing so that you have time to do things that will directly grow your business, to me, that is a really good decision to make. The second question to ask yourself is, does the cost of investing in outsourcing a task or a particular set of expertise, does that cost stack up against the time and energy that I would need to commit to this task, or to learning this task, or to developing expertise in this area and the results that I would likely to be able to achieve within a realistic time frame? So, you know, that would include, you know, that would typically come up in areas where you don't know what you don't know. And so the cost of you figuring it out from scratch, the cost through your time and your energy may well be clearly offset by an investment in outsourcing to someone who can do it much quicker with the expertise that they already have. A third question to ask yourself could be, do I have the cash flow available to experiment with outsourcing this function so you may not need to think about, well, once I outsource this, this is something that I must outsource forevermore. But could I experiment with outsourcing it for one to three months as a trial? And then question four is, what is the alternative to outsourcing? And the alternative could be that you do it yourself and you'll, you'll know, is that, is that a viable altern? But another alternative to consider is, is this a task that I could eliminate altogether, a task that maybe does not need to be done? Now, of course, a lot of administrative tasks, we wish we could eliminate them altogether, but we can't. And a lot of compliance tasks we need to do. But if you think about, you know, maybe the domestic tasks, the, the tasks that take up your time, maybe there are some things that can be eliminated and maybe in your business you are going through and doing some things that you believe you. But in fact, if you take a bit of an 8020 approach to it, you could eliminate this activity and make absolutely no difference or a very minimal difference to your bottom line or to the enjoyment or the sustainability of your business. So is it something you could eliminate altogether? This is sort of a very lighthearted example, but I have eliminated ironing so I don't buy any clothes anymore that require ironing. Now I think I might be starting to go back on this because I've noticed that so many of the clothes that are available in the shops now are linen and if you don't iron them, they, they do not keep their shape and they don't look as good. So. So I might have to reintroduce ironing into, into my task list. But it's an example of, you know, a task that we can in theory eliminate altogether. Certainly I don't iron for, for children. Children's clothing that requires ironing is not something that I am willing to do. But everyone's different. Of course, you may not be as lazy as me when it comes to laundry. So what to what should you outsource or what could you consider outsourcing as an executive or leadership coaching business owner? So things that you don't want to do, things where the time cost of gaining the expertise is too high and things that buy back significant amounts of your time to spend on business generating activities, particularly in the beginning or business delivery as you grow your business. So what are those examples? So the first one is administration. This is one that is pretty well understood as something we can outsource and is a good place to start to be honest. So that might include diary management, liaising with clients to set things up. Although I think that a lot of those automated automated calendaring systems now are really great alternatives to that client management. So the back and forth with clients around, invoicing, follow ups, that sort of thing. They may be able to populate your metrics that you review on a monthly basis. And I've got a full list of a bunch of these tasks that is included within the corporate to coach blueprint digital course. You know, they may help you with your task management system, whether that's asana or Monday.com they might help you with query responses. They might do slide and worksheet development and there are just, there's a huge endless amount of administrative tasks that we have that could potentially be outsourced. So definitely consider that. I would say if you want to dip a toe in the water, this is a good place to start. And it may be simply hiring a virtual assistant for five hours a week or 10 hours a month or something, something quite small because it's a opportunity to go through the list of what's on your plate and just practice, just practice outsourcing a few things and see what it's like, see if it works, see if it doesn't. The second category of things that I think you could consider outsourcing are financial related. Now before I go into this, I want to say that you cannot and you should not as a business owner outsource accountability for your financial management. You do need to have eyes on your finances on a regular basis, ideally daily, possibly weekly and certainly every month you should be reviewing your, your financial data and doing a cross check with your accounts so that that's a non negotiable. But I have always had a bookkeeper and an accountant and I found that to be extremely helpful on a number of levels. It reduces the stress come tax time exponentially because I've had times when I didn't have a bookkeeper in between a couple of my businesses and it was hell. So you know, I would never not have those. Now a bookkeeper who does a lot of the data entry and expense management and you know, invoicing and all of those sorts of things, your bookkeeper is probably not going to be the person who follows up overdue invoices, but that could be a task for an administrative assistant. You could also in the finance area, outsource. You might want to get a financial coach, right? Or a money mindset expert. If you have some issues that you know, you're grappling with around money and money management and financial expertise, there are definitely people that can help you with that as well. And I think that comes up for quite a few coaches. We have got a module in the corporate to coach blueprint on financial management. And within the Impact Coach Collective, one of our masterclasses coming up will be on financial management metrics and you know how to pay yourself and what to pay yourself. So you know, lots of it's really important to be thinking about finances. A third category of things you could outsource include graphic design and branding. And this is something that people are either generally really keen to dive into themselves or extremely hesitant to do so depending on which One of those you are might depend on whether that's something to consider. Outsourcing. Certainly getting a professional to design your website, your logos, your document templates, your social media images, you know, it is, it's often quite clear and it is very impactful and generally worth the money. But that also depends on your interest and the availability of funds that you have to, to invest in that. So but, but do consider it, that's somewhere to somewhere that spending a little money upfront can pay off down the track. Particularly in getting some sort of brand guidebook defined for you and getting your logos made professionally. Even though I do believe you can do it yourself and in the corporate to coach blueprint again, I take you into Canva and I show you how to build your own website so that you can get it immediately and have something up and running without, without thinking too hard, how you can develop your brand colors, all of that sort of thing, pick your fonts, but you know, outsourcing, you can outsource this to an expert if you want to. Another category could be copywriting. And copywriting sort of part of the marketing world, but specifically a copywriter is if you really struggle to write, it might be someone who can interview you and can take your, your knowledge and then write a series of articles or newsletters or posts. So for some people that is really challenging. And this might be an area where you could buy back a bit of emotional, emotional angst if you wanted to. You can also do that if you prefer to speak. You could simply talk into a transcript piece of a transcription app. So something like Otter AI or, or Descript, there's plenty of them out there. You could just speak into it. You could record it. And I believe someone told me that Word now has, you can put a voice recording into Word and it will automatically transcribe it. So if you find it easier to talk, then you might want to consider that the next category is marketing or social media or even outreach on social media at scale. Those are things that are outsourceable and that could be everything from your marketing strategy to your social media content plan to someone to actually do the posting. If you find that, that that administration gets in the way to building your, you know, 30 day content plan. Now when I say outsource, there is a bit of buyer beware because there are a lot of unscrupulous folks out there selling sales and marketing strategies to coaches. You might be getting a lot of those messages of, of people saying let me fill your calendar full of sales appointments of qualified leads But I would say that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. And it's one of my, my things. Want to make sure that coaches are presented with real, you know, evidence based proof strategies. And these ones tend to be a little exploitative and, and not really giving you the, the people that you want to, you want to be spending your time with in terms of sales, appointments. So if it's too good to be true, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. So just be a little bit careful when it comes to outsourcing in this area. Another area you might outsource is expertise and mentoring. So one example is within the Impact Coach Collective and the Corporate to Coach Blueprint. I offer expertise and strategies packaged up in a way that allow coaches to get information and tools that I have learned over many years to help go through the learning curve in a much quicker way. So that's an example of outsourcing learning and sort of buying a quicker route through a long learning curve that can take years. And that's something I think that outsourcing can be good for because really what you're outsourcing is the don't know what you don't know factor to get up to speed quicker. So once you decide what to outsource, there are, there are a lot of ways that you can outsource. So one of those ways is, is to employ someone. This is the most risky way. And you know, I, I currently have my wonderful ea. Jill is, is an employee because she's based in the same country as me and it worked for us to, to do that. But this is risky. It's harder to navigate. There are additional obligations, things like payroll taxes and workers compensation requirements and annual leave. And you have to, you know, you have to tick a lot more boxes. So you know, be very. I don't think that's the way to start. I think the way to start is with contractors because there is a lower risk, right? There are generally, there's generally not a lot of lock in. You're not compelled to stay with the contractor. But be very careful what you sign. You can generally do a trial basis. Sometimes that can mean you pay a higher rate, but often it doesn't. An example of contractors is vas. So you'll hear me talk about VAS and what a VA is is a virtual assistant. And typically virtual assistants are cheaper to hire and based in certain geographies around the world. So it could be anywhere. And you can get VAs in any country. It's very common to hire VAs that are based in the Philippines. I have a wonderful VA I work with who is based in Dubai, but they can be, they can be really anywhere in the world. So although they are a cheaper option, there are some things to consider. So for me, the ethics of paying rates for VAS is really important. And it's important for me that I am not paying an exploitative rate to a VA or that I'm not engaging an agency that is taking a huge cut and then paying less than a living wage. So that is really important to me. So, you know, I want to pay, you know, reasonable rates. You should also be aware that when you engage VAs, there is a lot of training that is required and you need to be really deliberate and clear about how you do that. There are many outsourcing agencies around, some better than others, and they are definitely a way to go to help you find the right person quicker. But you do need to be aware that in many cases, not all, sometimes you pay upfront and then this is not the case. In many cases, they are taking a significant cut off what you are paying your va. I have seen some good examples recently where you pay, you know, a few thousand dollars upfront and then you have a contractual relationship directly with the va, so you'll pay what you pay, go straight to them and you don't have any more fees that are payable. So I think that is a good model. But that, that's a bit trickier if you're not sure it's going to work or if you're not sure you want to stick with it. You'd have to decide whether you wanted to make that upfront investment. So in any event, you can find people directly. There's a few apps, sorry, a few groups on Facebook, for example, and I have used those successfully. But you need to be prepared that there is a lot of work to be done in screening applicants. You will get hundreds of applicants and you'll need to go through quite extensive interview processes, but you will, you'll find great people. There's wonderful people. Another alternative of how to outsource is to go onto websites like Fiverr or Upwork, where a lot of people who are working as VAS will offer their services in, in a different way, more for a fixed task. So this would typically work. So, and here's some examples of how I've used people on Fiverr and Upwork. I've used someone to design a document for me when I've sent them my brand and said, could you design sort of this template document. I've used someone to create a podcast intro which I didn't use today. You $10 I think on off upwork when they combined my music and my audio because I didn't want to spend the time learning how to do it. And we've used it for, for other things generally sort of brand or design related tasks. But you can use them for, you know, if you have a look on Fiverr or upwork you will see it's endless what they can do for you. And then finally a a a way to outsource that you may not have thought of but is worth considering is actually using an AI tool either paid or free. Because a lot of these tools are getting more sophisticated and can definitely take some of the administrative tasks off your plate. They can certainly help to take a lot of the time away from content development, right? They can help you with ideas, they can help you with a draft of what you've got to write. They can help write templates for emails. They can come up with ideas for all sorts of things. So you know, that might be a place to explore if you have a few tasks you would like to get off your plate or save some time. Now I do have a resource that you can download on how to use AI to save time in your coaching business and that is at www.elliscarf.com AI so that is a good resource if you want to look at how to save a bit of time. I also mentioned that I was going to talk about outsourcing on the home front and I think this is really important, particularly for women, but for everyone, because if we think about what gets in the way of us being able to focus in a a really clear and unencumbered way on our business. One of the things that I hear most that gets in the way is the mental load of our life and our life admin. And so there is a huge amount of our, you know, energy and if you think about it, even if it's just 10 or 20% of your brain capacity at any, you know, on who's picking up the kids, who's cooking the dinner, have I done the shopping? This gets in the way, right? This gets in the way of our time to work on our business and our energy to do it. So I think it's worth considering buying back some time and some mental energy by outsourcing tasks on the home front. Because even though they don't seem to be directly business related, they are because you are one person who operates in a whole world of obligations that are on you. And so being able to outsource some of those will impact the energy and the time that you have in your business. Or it'll buy you back time to do the things that you want to do and that you love without feeling guilty. So you could consider outsourcing childcare, cleaning of your home, gardening or outdoor task, lawn mowing, ironing. You could get meal deliveries, meal service, meal prep services, get your laundry done. You can get a personal trainer to help you make sure that you are exercising. And there's heaps more. So over the years I've invested in childcare a bit less now that my daughter is older and a lot more independent. We still have someone help us with the cleaning. Gardening, gardening is one that I really love the idea of gardening and we have quite a big, a big yard. But I'm never going to do it if I'm honest. So that's important for us. And certainly lawn mowing, it's really not, not, not our thing. Ironing, like I said, I just don't do that. When we get busy, I'll often sign up for a meal Prep service like HelloFresh for a while. But honestly, my husband does most of the meal prep now. We do have a personal trainer who comes to us once a week so that we, you know, because I've decided as we get older, we need to make sure we're staying strong. So we just do weight training with a personal trainer once a week. Just as a bit of main. What else would I like to outsource? I'd love childcare in the very early mornings right before our daughter gets up. Because currently my husband and I have to trade off the exercise time first thing in the morning. It would be amazing if we could both do it every day. So that's something I might look into because I feel like I'm better. I'm more focused when I have a chance to exercise early in the morning. Certainly the dog is a lot happier when he gets a long walk every day, but it would be, you know, I think that's something that would contribute to, to my ability to be focused and do a great job. So I'm going to look into that as my outsourcing task. What about you? So after hearing this, what do you think is a realistic outsourcing task that you could consider taking action on? I'd love to hear your thoughts on outsourcing for your business. Have you done it already? Are you considering it? Please send me a message. I'm@ellieucentorg.com and before I sign off today, I just want to invite you to head over to my website@elliscarf.com to sign up for my newsletter. If you sign up for my newsletter, you will get notified about all the stuff we're doing inside the Corporate to Coach blueprint within the Collective. And you know I recommend staying tuned because we're going to make a few changes to the program and the branding before our next launch in May. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you get information on all of this first. And also, you know I like to each week make sure I'm including some tips, some reflections and some interesting notes that or things that I've come across that might be relevant to you with a coaching business. So on that note, I'm going to sign off. Have a great week and I will look forward to talking to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive Coach. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarf.com. have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.