Outsourcing & Delegation
You cannot do everything yourself — and trying to is one of the biggest barriers to business growth. Outsourcing and delegation free up your time for the high-value work that only you can do, while ensuring everything else gets done properly. This pathway helps you work out what to outsource, who to hire, and how to manage it so you actually get the results you are paying for.
Not everything should be outsourced. The key is to identify which tasks require your specific expertise, relationships or judgement — and which do not. The former you keep. The latter you outsource or delegate.
A useful framework is to categorise your tasks into four types: tasks only you can do (high-value, requires your unique skills), tasks you are good at but others could do, tasks you are not good at, and tasks that are purely administrative. The last three categories are candidates for outsourcing.
Think about the opportunity cost of your time. If your time is worth £100 per hour in client work, spending two hours per week on bookkeeping costs you £200 per week in lost revenue. A bookkeeper costs £20–£40 per hour. The maths is straightforward.
Common areas that small businesses outsource successfully: bookkeeping and accounting, social media management, content writing, graphic design, website maintenance, customer service, virtual assistance, and IT support. These are all areas where skilled freelancers are readily available at reasonable rates.
Good to know
- List every task you do in a week and categorise each one: only I can do this / someone else could do this
- Start with the tasks you find most draining or that take the most time relative to their value
- Calculate the cost of your time before deciding whether to outsource
Watch out for
- Outsourcing tasks that are core to your customer experience without careful oversight
- Keeping tasks because you enjoy them even when someone else could do them better
- Not factoring in the time required to manage outsourced work when calculating the benefit
Ready for the next step?
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