Greg Faxon breaks down when coaches should start outsourcing: once your time is worth more than routine work. Focus on bookkeeping, virtual assistant tasks, and specialist contractors. You need basic systems and cash flow, plus the ability to let go and communicate clearly. Most coaches start outsourcing in years 1-3.
How's it going? I got a question recently from someone who asked, is there such thing as outsourcing too early on in your coaching business? So I wanted to shoot a quick video. And before I answer that question, because it's a little bit more nuanced than just a yes or no, let's talk about why it's important to outsource. Now, you know, if you're really, really early on in your business, it just might be a cash flow issue. You just might not have the cash to be able to hire someone, to be able to have a virtual assistant, to be able to hire a contractor. And that's fine. It might just be too early for you. But the reason it's important to ultimately start outsourcing as your business progresses is because once you figure out that your time is valuable, right? Once you realize that, well, I could either spend an hour moving email contacts from one software to another software, or I could spend an hour on a sales call with a potential client and make $5,000, $10,000 from that. It's going to become clear that some tasks are better uses of your time than others. And you're going to start wanting to get the tasks off your plate that really you shouldn't be doing because someone else could do them for you. Okay? So that's why it's important to outsource, really. If you can have someone else do it for under $50 an hour, at a certain point in your business, your time is worth way more than that. So that's something you should consider outsourcing. So let's talk about other things that you might outsource. Let's talk about really specifically, what are the categories you might choose to outsource as you're getting started? The first one is bookkeeping. This is one of the first things I outsource because I just am not that detail oriented. I wasn't good at it and I also, it just drained me. So there's some things that just bring your energy down and when you're doing those things, not only do those suck to do, but they also take energy away from other tasks and that you're good at and that drive revenue in your business. And because bookkeeping doesn't help you get paid, really, it's just something you have to do. That's a great thing to start outsourcing. I always recommend bench co and you can get a link to that at my page, gregfaxon.com Tools I have a list of some different resources like that. And that's at the top of them. So bookkeeping is the first thing that I would think about outsourcing. The second thing is outsourcing very small, kind of more menial tasks. And that's where a virtual assistant can come in handy. So I have a virtual assistant. Maria lives in El Salvador, and she is awesome. For example, one of the things that she does for me is she takes the recordings from my group calls, downloads them, uploads them to YouTube and puts them in the members area so that people in Fill youl Client Roster, which is my group program, can access them anytime and can go back and look at them. Now, that's something that only takes five or ten minutes each time I do them, but I do it twice a week. Eventually, it's those recurring tasks that you realize I've been doing this, you know, every single week, and it's only five minutes here or there. So it's easy to just want to get it done myself. But I should really create a routine so that someone else could do it. And this brings us to an interesting point when we talk about is there such thing as too early to outsource? Well, if you don't have systems in your business yet, and if you're probably making under 5k a month and you haven't systematized any of your processes, it's going to be hard to outsource. Because especially with virtual assistants, one of the things that really helps them is saying, you know, we do this step one, this step two, this step three, and if you don't have a system in place, it's really hard to hand that stuff off. And in order to create that system, sometimes it takes some time. And so if you don't have a little bit of cash flow already, you know, that can be difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs. So people end up usually starting to outsource within the first or second or third year of their business, not kind of in the first six to 12 months. So that's the second thing that I think about outsourcing is smaller logistical tax tasks. Excuse me, think about getting a va. The third thing that you might think about outsourcing is to select contractors, people who are just better at you than you at certain tasks. So, for example, I have a designer who I work with. She does a lot of the graphics for my blog post. She makes webinar slides, things like that. Now, I can do that stuff. I'm okay, but she's better. And it's important to me to have that kind of consistent brand image. So her name's Molly Coons. She's great. So you can look her up. And that's an important thing too, is if there are select contractors. I've had someone help me on my book launches. And so places where people have some specific expertise, where they can focus on that and you can keep doing what's in your zone of genius. That's another great place to outsource. So you have bookkeeping, small logistical tasks to a va and then contractors, like designers. Okay, so those are the kind of three areas where you might consider outsourcing. Let's talk about kind of how to actually do it. I already mentioned that you're going to want to systematize some things, make it really easy to follow, be really clear. That's one thing you have to learn is when you're making the switch from doing everything yourself to having other people help you. Hey, Jamie, how's it going? Then one of the big challenges is that when other people are helping you, they don't know the things you know. So you have to get really good at writing out exactly what you need and communicating well, because otherwise things are going to get lost in translation. But the other critical piece is not so much strategic. It's more of a mindset, inner game piece that stops a lot of people from outsourcing. And my guess is if you're not outsourcing at all, or if you're not outsourcing at the level you know you need to, what's getting in the way is you're having trouble letting go. The truth is, if you're an entrepreneur and if you're in business for yourself, you have a bit of an ego. You might not be cocky, but you have enough confidence to say, you know, I can basically do the things that I set my mind to. That's a great thing to have. But sometimes it gets in the way of saying, you know, someone else could probably do this too. And in fact, I should let someone else do this, so I should focus on something else that's better for me to be doing, like sales calls like coaching clients like building systems or being a leader in your business. So that's something to consider is are you totally willing to let go? And the cost of not letting go are that you're going to continue to stay occupied with tasks that are not in your zone of genius and are not generating revenue directly for your business. And every hour that you spend on those tasks, you're losing money. If you're working below your pay grade, you're losing money. So you got to let go, alright? You got to learn to let go. And if you can do that, your business is going to grow a lot, a lot faster. Alright? I hope this is helpful for you all. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll see you on the next live video.
