Christo: Hey there business owners. This is a tip about outsourcing and how you can get all that stuff you have to do off your plate in a nice smooth way. My name’s Christo from Basic Bananas and of course this is Franziska, she happens to also be from Basic Bananas.

Franziska: [inaudible 00:00:23].

Christo: On today’s tip we’re going to go through how to get this stuff off your plate and get it to someone so that you know the job’s done well even if you are a control freak yourself and you want it done exactly how you do it, and how we’ve done a lot and how we’ve grown and grown our team from pretty much us two to a team of 22 now and how we’ve managed to do that really well and knowing that everybody’s maximized and they’re working, doing their job.

Franziska: It’s definitely one of the biggest challenges that small businesses have, outsourcing. Where to start, what to outsource, who to hire so let’s get started with how do you even know what to outsource?

Christo: Yes, so we have four steps which we go through. If you’re feeling overwhelmed at any point in your business, these are the steps that we say to just reset and do it again. It might be another year, you get on top of things and then suddenly you feel overwhelmed. Follow these four steps, start again at step number one. Step number one is simply keep a time log of what you are doing. What I mean by that is you might just print off a week schedule where you have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, basically just write down what you do throughout each time slot, throughout each day of the week. It might be nights where you have 9-10, 10-11, etc. Just put in what you’re doing, how you’re spending you time so we get an accurate assessment of what you’re actually doing. I recommend doing it just for even two weeks. If you did it for a month you’ll have a better assessment because we want to get a real, honest snap shot of how you are actually spending your time first of all.

Franziska: Exactly. Now the second step is you A, B and C those tasks. Now you look at this pattern, the tasks that you’ve written down assessing your week or your month and you look at what are all the repetitive tasks. Then you put all these repetitive tasks into A, B and C. The A column, so just make three columns on a spreadsheet or in a Word document. The A columns are the things that you absolutely must do yourself. Those are the things that you really don’t want to or can’t outsource. This could even be things that you want to, it could be you want to still reply to your emails, you still want to look after partners, you still want to manage your team.

The B tasks are all the tasks that you probably could outsource, but these are things that you probably could outsource. It could be bookkeeping. It could be picking up the phone. It could be managing your diary, it could be booking you in for different meetings. Then the C tasks are all the things that you absolutely have to outsource. These things you have to outsource. Stuff like cleaning, what’s another one?

Christo: For you. It depends, some as soon as you said bookkeeping I was like, oh that might be a must for some as well, you know, if it’s taking your time up and there’ll be someone out there that’s better than you at doing it anyway.

Franziska: So you can choose what you want, but I would definitely cleaning either way. I think we need to keep some cleaners in business so we should probably, definitely 100% outsource that. That’s the second step.

Christo: Yes. Third step what we do next is we need to systemize things. If we’re going to be able to get to a point where we have someone else do it, we need to have a structure of what we actually do. Third step is you look at those A, Bs and Cs and then you simply record your processes for doing each of those tasks, so I look at the, first of all probably the Cs, go okay, exactly what do we want? How do we want it cleaned? What does clean look like? Take some photos, structure it, organize it into processes step one, step two, step three. You do it once, when it’s recorded well once it will free you from ever having to do this again so it’s worth putting in the time to just do it.

If it’s things on your computer, record your screen, use a program like Camtasia. Record your screen, say what you’re doing as you’re doing it and save it. We save our processes in Google Sites so the whole operations, manuals should be saved as Google Sites, like a personal website just for your own team where you can record your processes and the steps to do every task that you do.

Franziska: The last step is outsource, so now you have to find the right people to do those tasks. It’s always good to just start, if you are a little bit of a control freak and you don’t know that there’s someone that can do a better job than you, just find someone that you think has the specialty in that one field that you want to outsource and then just let go. You really have to let go. Try and not micromanage, because micromanaging really doesn’t help anyone. Maybe you have to do something, I don’t know, maybe do some ritual where you can let go of things but you have to let go, find someone to help you do the tasks that you really must outsource. It will free up your time so you can use that time that you free up to grow your business, to do the tasks, the A tasks that really help you grow your business and create an amazing life for yourself and your team members and your family.

Christo: Absolutely, it can sometimes even be a software program that you outsource to. You might be looking at some of the tasks and you go, well actually that could be automated, you know, it could be a program even doing it. Could be someone as a virtual [crosstalk 00:05:05]. Virtual assistant, could be a robot, virtual assistant, could be a contractor. It could be someone working one day a week or two days a week, just you find the right- or it could be a team member of course. It’s usually going to be some sort of program, a contractor who comes and does bits and pieces work for you or it’s a virtual assistant somewhere else around the globe or it’s a team member.

Franziska: Exactly, so have a go and let us know how you go with your freeing up your time and outsourcing. Once you get started it gets quite a big difference.