The bigger you become as a business the more critical it becomes to know when to outsource. Learning how to market your business more effectively is the most important thing you can do. Sometimes rather than doing it yourself, outsourcing these tasks saves your time to do the other admin tasks that you can't delegate. 

Understanding the good, the bad and the ugly of each path can help you determine what might be the best fit for you.

Good:

You have identified your priorities and which of those you are good at and can do easily. You have identified the parts of your business that you can delegate to someone else. Includingtasks at home that take your time like house cleaning. 

If you have time to do the work yourself, it costs you nothing! You are learning and growing. It's a networking opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the work you are doing and the best ways to do it. 

Bad: 

Outsourcing can be stressful when you have not done your research. Sometimes we are so busy we just want to drop it on someone else's lap and hope for the best. There are real risks in doing this and you may be doing yourself a disservice. You need to set your expectations and clearly communicate them to ensure anyone you hire is set up to successfully support you.

When you are taking on the work, you must be a self starter AND a self finisher. If this is not you and you know that it is simply not a good fit. You will need to put the investigation and research in yourself, you need to figure out the "how to's", which can be daunting and time consuming. 

Ugly: 

If you outsource your work without identifying the need. You have wasted your time and money. While your are delegating the work, you MUST continue to lead the charge on what and how they will best support you.  If you don't, it will backfire.

The risk doing it yourself, is it simply does not get done. You have spent money and time, nothing is better, you are over worked and not seeing the results you expected or forecasted. You end up frustrated and back in the same spot you started. 

This was the topic of my recent Spa Business Break.