When is it Time to Hire Help or Outsource

On today’s episode we’re going to talk about when is the right time to hire help, whether that’s a VA, or hiring someone like an SEO coach, or someone to help you with ads, whatever the thing is, we’re going to talk about when you should and when you shouldn’t hire someone to help you, too beautiful friend,

Okay, let’s dive right in. In Why am I talking about today? Why is it so important? Well, I’ll tell you a couple of reasons. First of all, I do have people ask me things like when should I hire a VA or I’m thinking about hiring help. And that’s the first reason I want to talk about this today. 

But the second is even way back when I was helping people with their online presence, you know, over 15 years ago, the people I was working with would be approached all the time by either an SEO company or an advertising company, or some other company trying to sell them something. And of course, the it would sound great, like, hey, we can help you get more leads, we can help you, you know, get traffic or whatever they were offering. 

The issue was in my clients just you know, didn’t really think about this is why would you hire someone to help you if you don’t know what your baseline is, if you don’t know what your baseline is, how do you know if the money you’re putting forth, or the person helping you is actually helping you achieve your goal, right, or your business measurements, you know, improving that. That is why this is so important. And that’s why we’re going to talk about when you should and when you shouldn’t hire professional help, to specialize to help you grow or to help take on some of your workload. So here we go.

Okay, first, let’s talk about when you shouldn’t hire help, at least not long term help. The first is if you have a problem with your business, then you need to understand what the problem is, and how it can be fixed. Now, obviously, if you can’t fix it on your own, I’m not saying gets don’t get someone to help you. But you’ve got to understand where you have an issue. And then you have to understand truly how it gets fixed. Even if you don’t actually do the work yourself. That’s the first thing. The next is you can’t outsource something or handed off if you don’t know how to do it yourself. Or you don’t know how to do it yourself. 

And it’s not so clear that you can very specifically articulate what it is you want from the person. Because if we can’t, step by step, explain to them our expectations of what they need to do. It’s not going to work out and we’re going to be frustrated. And so as the person we’re trying to work with, because we have failed to super clearly in really simple terms, give them examples of what we want, how we want it when we want it and make sure that that aligns with how they can help us. That’s the second thing. The next is to how many people try to get help before they actually know their numbers before they know their measurements. 

And this is just a slippery slope. Because how do you know how much they helped you if you don’t even know your your numbers. And so today for this example, about the numbers I’ll explain regarding your website. And so here’s often what happens. Someone has a website. 

Obviously, most people if your site’s been around for a little bit, and there’s some content, you’re getting traffic, right? Someone is finding your site or you’re telling people about it, or it’s in your emails for people are clicking on your website. Well, that is obviously a metric that you’d want to know how many people are coming to your website, from where and then how many people are signing up for something that you offer, right. So this can be an email lead. This could be they’re calling you on the phone, but they’re signing up for a program where maybe a free group or community you have but we have to track those numbers. Because if you ever want to grow that and you’re at that point where you actually want to spend money growing it not just doing it gimmick, you know, tactics or strategies to help you. 

You want to know what your baseline is? And then where are you trying to get in? Does it make sense for the money that someone’s you know, what program? Or what service they’re offering you? Does that make sense to have it aligned with what you want and where you’re at in your business? So it’s so important that you understand that.

 The next is, are you consistently having that extra work? Or that it’s an area that you just can’t fit in doing? But it’s integral to your business? Meaning, are you consistently not able to do the work or you’re just, you’ve grown enough, and you have consistent growth, where it makes sense financially, but also from a workload perspective, to have someone help you? So that’s the other thing that people need to look at it. Sometimes we don’t, we just feel busy. We feel like we’re overwhelmed. But often, that is a different struggle or challenge that we have to work through. Because if it’s not really about growth, right, like maybe our revenues aren’t where we want them to be yet. We’re thinking of hiring someone, and I’ve been there, just, you know, truth bomb 100%. I’ve been there. I’ve had those times where I feel overwhelmed. 

And I think, is it because I need help as I get a little bit bigger. But sometimes it’s because I wasn’t super clear on my priorities in what work had to get done. What was mission critical? And what work could be put on the backburner that wasn’t really mission critical to what I was trying to accomplish at that time. So often, it’s because in our minds, we think, oh, gosh, wouldn’t it be so nice if I had help? But before we get help, we just need to reflect and decide, are we? Are we overwhelmed and too busy? Because we’re not prioritizing, and we’re not doing the most important work in instead? Are we doing busy work? 

So important to make that differentiation? And sometimes you might need someone else to help you look at that, you know, look at your schedule for the week, what are you working on? What are your goals, or if you don’t have goals, yet are not real clear goals, maybe you need help with getting those kind of nailed down, you know, maybe you need to work with someone, you know, a consultant or a coach or, you know, some sort of expert in that area, you know, whatever your area is. So it’s just super important, though, that we really look at each of these things before we jump into working with a virtual assistant, or hiring a specialist to help us with something, whether it’s to grow our, you know, our audience, or whether it’s to grow maybe an Instagram following. Maybe it’s to get a

publicist, or somebody to help us with PR. Once again, before we do that, what are our goals? And what are we already hitting now? Or are we going from never submitting, you know, like pitches to media or podcasts, but then we’re going to hire somebody to do PR for us. But we have no baseline like we’ve never tried it ourselves. We just think, Gosh, I need help here. There’s two challenges there. The first is, it’s expensive to work with a PR person. So if you don’t have a budget for that right now, then it’s costly. And so the question is, could you do it on your own? Do you have two hours a week or a couple hours a week, or even a handful of hours a month? To work on? You know, putting your stuff out there to people? Or who else could you use, that’s maybe not a full publicity firm, a PR firm. And so there’s always good alternatives to write, there’s this, there’s been around for many, many years now. Right? A freelance market. And so you can go on places like Fiverr, or Upwork, and lots of other ones, and find somebody to help you with on a project basis. Right. 

And so that’s always a great thing to to try is don’t commit to some long term, you know, three months, six months, 12 month program, until you’re sure that’s really what you want to do. typed it out, maybe with somebody that will just work on a project with you. The next thing is, that’s what I always say is do a test with somebody, you know, before you commit two months in lots of money to work with somebody, do a test, you know, and obviously, like a paid test, like, just say, like, Hey, can I just have you work on this one thing for me, and like, let’s just see how it goes, you know, if this is a fit. The next thing is, until you’re sure that the the thing you’re going to do is what you want to do. Don’t sign that long term agreement initially. 

Make sure there’s a fit. So whether that’s doing phone calls or doing that test, or making sure what is the cause? Can you get out of it if you’re unhappy with the quality of the work or the profit or timeliness of it? But you need to be really careful that you understand what are the terms to which you’re signing. So if you’re signing a six month you know deal with somebody, either a VA or like I said, a PR person or anyone what you know? And when what case can you cancel it is it a cancelled anytime as long as you give 15 days notice or 30 days notice. It’s so important though. And so I don’t think you should just jump in to working with a professional working with someone to help you until you really understand these things. Let’s review. If you have a problem, you need to learn how to fix it first. And you need to know how to deal with that thing before you hire somebody at least long term. If you’re going to outsource or hire company to help you in a specialized way, you need to learn how to do the thing yourself before you hand it off. Because if you want them to do a great job, you need to be clear on what it is you want them to do for you. You have to know next is you have to know your numbers. What are your metrics are your measurements, which What’s your baseline? 

You have to know that because you don’t want to start some giving someone money and think, Oh, they’re doing a great job, but you really had no idea how it was going on your own if you weren’t measuring metrics or numbers or indicators. The next is do you really need help? Do you need, you know help let’s on a monthly or weekly basis? Or do you feel overwhelmed because you haven’t set clear, reasonable priorities? Next is are you experiencing consistent growth? Where you know, it makes sense to spend that money on another person to help you? And then can you do a test? Or if you can’t do a test, can you shine sign a shorter duration agreement or ensure that you can get out of the agreement? If it’s not going well for you if you’re not satisfied with the work or the results you’re getting? And what sort of timeframe does that look like? And so

I think this is so important, because like I said before I’ve been here, there have been times where I thought, oh my gosh, I’m so busy, I could really hire somebody to help me with this. But often it’s because I was spending too much time on things that didn’t matter. They weren’t mission critical. And when I eliminated some of those other things, if you will busy work or work that was distracting me from my primary, you know, top three goals, I had more time. And surely that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to a stage where you do hire people to help you whether they’re contractors or whether they’re freelancers or whether you have employees. But we need to make sure we’re at that point before we get that help. So reach out I’d love to hear if you’ve if you already work with people that help you and if you do it what point did you hire those people? If you’re not quite there, but you’ve been wondering about this? What other questions do you have? And how else can I help you answer this question about when do you get help? Until next time, I hope you have a great week.