Passions That Pay

Whilst I have always seen outsourcing as a terrific tool and have always recommended it to clients, I haven’t until now walked my talk.

Outsourcing can be a challenge for those of us who like to do it all. The idea of handing over a part of our business can be daunting. Will they do it as well as I can? Why am I paying someone to do what I can do? How do I handle it if they don’t do the job to my standards? These are all questions that become an obstacle to us.

But eventually we will all come across tasks that we just don’t have the time to do or the time to learn or the aptitude for. As our businesses grow, they can become overwhelming and none of us are masters at everything. So if outsourcing can be a cure for overwhelm, what can we do if outsourcing seems overwhelming in itself?

My answer was to start small. As I blogged about recently, I started doing blog carnivals and as I hadn’t done these before and because to be effective they have to be done regularly so that you can build up name recognition, this was the perfect task to hand over to a Virtual Assistance. Enter left Teresa Morrow from Key Business Partners , a friend and experienced V.A. who had been doing blog carnivals for my good friend, business coach Jenn Givler . It was a wonderful relief to know that this will be automatically handled and won’t be ANOTHER thing on my plate for me to worry about.

The second item on my to-do list was to create a logo to use for my Blogtalkradio show. Pam Sargant, a logo designer who is in my Passion Project Skype room was an obvious choice. You can see the beautiful logo she did for me on the top right hand side of this page. I am not particularly talented in graphic design and certainly do not know all the latest “web 2.0″ techniques so there is no way I could have done something even half as good.

My first foray into the world of outsourcing was successful because I worked with people I already knew, liked and trusted. I felt comfortable knowing that they would work with me until I was happy with the final result. I knew they both have excellent work ethics and would give me very good value for money. I knew the costs would fit easily into my budget.

So if outsourcing is something you know you need, start small, hand over just one thing in your business to someone you already trust and take it from there.

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