5 ways outsourcing will change your life!
As entrepreneurs and self proclaimed “one women shows”, we often embody the "do-it-all" attitude, driven to pursue our dreams and manage EVERY single aspect of our businesses. For me, this was something that took me a long time to learn, in fact, even to this day, I still very much like to have a finger in every single aspect of my business. It was only 2021 that I actually hired a VA to help take some things off my plate. But I doing this I have come to realise how important and effective it can be when you start outsourcing things that aren't perhaps your zone of genius to people where it is THEIR zone of genius. Today, consider this your blog post cheat sheet in the five ways that outsourcing will absolutely change your life. And I mean, not just your business but your life!
The amount of TIME you save
Here's the gods honest, truth. Take a look at your to-do list right now, and circle every single thing that somebody else could do. I mean it, go through your to do list and really look at it. Could somebody else be doing this for me? The reality is a lot of the menial tasks in our business, even a 17-year-old intern could do them. But for some reason we as makeup artists, when we have built this business from the ground up, we become emotionally attached to every single task in our business, they are almost becomes impossible for us to imagine anyone else doing it. But when we look at the truth of it, anyone if trained properly can manage a diary.
And don't get me wrong just because I'm saying the word menial task doesn't mean they're not important, it means that they keep the business running. They keep us earning money but they do take up brain space. By doing these tasks we do not have time to then do the tasks that can promote business growth, make more money in the long run, and make huge changes within our business. Let's take SEO as an example. Now this is one of the things that many of us might not invest in. I actually learnt high level SEO myself over the course of many years, but imagine if I had just outsourced that task to somebody? All that time, all those hours (and trust me there was so many of those hours!) spent learning something that was not my zone of genius. In fact it's not even something I am remotely interested in. If I had just outsourced this task, I could've spent those hours doing something that could've pushed my business profit further. SEO is not my zone of genius, but somebody out there has gone to university for that, somebody out there absolutely loves SEO - it's THEIR zone of genius. They get chills from seeing their clients go from page 10 to page 1 on Google. Not only will we have better results outsourcing this, but it gives us more time, which in the long run, builds up to huge impact.
2. Mistake Proofing your Business
I've already spoken about time above, but I really want to hit this home. I find myself, I only have a limited amount of capacity per day for decision-making. For me - decision fatigue is a real beast, so my priority is to limit the amount of decisions that I make per day. The amount of things that I have on my plate, I'm running a membership, I'm mentoring 10 students currently, I run a podcast, I run agency, and that's not even counting all of the everyday decisions like what to eat, what you wear, what time to take my dog for a walk. There are so many decisions that we have to make a when you are the one-woman show making them all! We can get fatigue real quick! Outsourcing the things that are not your zone of genius or even outsourcing the things that are taking up a lot of your brain capacity, freeze up the amount of decisions that you are making per day.
Now, I will put my hand on my heart at the time of writing this I am at max decision capacity. I'm in a place in my business in my life I'm really really happy where I'm at. But I find, I'm making major mistakes. For example the other week my dentist appointment got moved. I had planned after my dentist appointment to meet up with a friend. When the dentist rang me and changed my appointment, I then forgot to change the date with my friend and ended up letting her down. This is what happens when you're making too many decisions in your business - things forward to the wayside. They are literally falling out of your brain! And this is where outsourcing can really help for freeing up some of your brain space. The less decisions that you have to make per day, the less things you have to remember, the less mistakes you will be making. I guarantee it.
3. You are HAPPIER!
I don't think this is talked about enough. When we are in business, we are juggling a lot of plates. We are often the social media manager, the director, the artist, the manager, the builder, the producer, the PA, the content creator, the list really is endless. It's no wonder we have decision fatigue, right? And here is a wonderful and underrated thing that happens when you outsource. You become happier. What I mean by this is there are so many elements in our business that we are trying to master and very often, the reason that we went into make up was to do make up, was to be the artist. Most of us don't like creating content, most of us don't like SEO, there are a lot of things that when you go into business, you don't realise that you end up doing, that nobody told you about, that you have to do to get results. And some of those things and those tasks can make us bloody miserable. For me email management can actually make me quite unhappy. I didn't actually go into business to spend all day and night on my emails. If you're able to pass some of those tasks that make you a little bit unhappy to somebody who actually enjoys doing it, or perhaps does it as their full-time job, it's almost guaranteed your happiness levels are going to increase. By getting rid of the things in your business that make you unhappy you open up room for the things that do make you truly happy.
4. You are able to be creative.
Again, another super underrated thing that happens, but you are able to be creative. As an artist, we are natural creatives, and when we are bogged down doing the nitty-gritty in our business to keep it ticking over, it is simply impossible to find the time to be creative. Creativity needs time, space, freedom to really come to fruition. When I'm feeling most uninspired in my business, it's usually when I'm extremely overworked and I don't have the brain space to be able to be creative. You may have noticed on my social channels, I am back to creating content again, being more of an artist again and testing. This has come as a result of me, giving myself the space and the freedom to be creative, by investing in team members who can help ease the load. If you have found yourself with a lack of inspiration, recently, the lack of will to create, or simply just no motivation or desire to be creative. It's not because you're not an artist anymore or that you've lost your spark. It's probably because you've just simply do not have the capacity, or the right conditions to be a creative. Lack of creativity comes at the expense of doing absolutely everything in your business, but when you outsource you are able to nourish the right conditions to allow that creativity to shine.
5. You build the foundations of a team!
Perhaps a really underrated but crucial thing that happens, that not a lot of us think about when we outsource is team building. Where is make-up artists often working on our own for many many years at that. When you take those first steps towards hiring a VA or hiring a social media manager what you are essentially doing is building your team. And how bloody bad ass is that? Let me tell you from experience, it's actually awesome when you have another person to bounce ideas off of, or another person who truly just gets it. We can get so used to working on our own that we actually forget what it's like to work with other people and the benefits that come with that. Not only are you not working lonely anymore but you are working with somebody somebody is who is helping you share the load, somebody who is helping contribute to your ideas or perhaps looking at things from a different perspective. Creating a team is truly the biggest and best way to scale. And I don't necessarily mean a bridal team of artist that you sent out on jobs but rather a team from the inside that can help you build and scale a profitable business.
Amazon may have been created by one person, but Amazon was not able to scale with one person. MAC may have been created by the two Frank’s but it did not get to every department store in the world with just the two frank’s. If you are looking to build a business in the six or seven figures, then you need to be thinking about hiring a team. There's a lot of fear that comes with hiring a team, because you are then responsible for paying somebody else's salary, and it can be a hard mindset shift when you think about that money in your pocket instead. But truly the biggest growth comes from hiring a team, giving you the ultimate capability to scale - we can't do it all, we shouldn't be doing at all.
It required some time for me to embrace this shift, but the outcomes have been nothing short of remarkable. Embracing outsourcing and adopting a team-centric business approach has propelled both personal and professional growth. I strongly encourage you to pursue this approach. What reservations are holding you back from elevating your makeup artistry venture into a realm of unparalleled success?