4 signs it’s time to outsource business support

There’s rarely a big flashing sign telling you it’s time to get some help.

More often, it’s a collection of little things.

The email you meant to reply to yesterday. The CRM you keep promising yourself you’ll sort out. The follow-up that’s been sitting on your list for two weeks.

None of them feel big enough on their own.

Together, though, they start taking up quite a lot of space.

If you’re wondering whether you’re actually ready to outsource some of the day-to-day running of your business, these are four signs I’d pay attention to.

1. Admin is creeping into everything

You sit down to work on something important and somehow end up replying to emails, updating a spreadsheet, moving a meeting and looking for a document you know you saved somewhere.

An hour disappears.

Admin is obviously part of running a business. The problem comes when managing the business starts leaving you less and less time to actually run it.

If the first and last part of your working day is regularly being swallowed by little operational jobs, it might be time to look at what someone else could take over.

2. Things are starting to get missed

A follow-up goes out later than you wanted.

Someone’s details haven’t made it into the CRM.

You remember at 9pm that you were supposed to send something.

Nothing catastrophic has happened. You’re keeping it all going.

But you’re keeping it going by remembering everything yourself.

That works... until it doesn’t.

Good business support isn't only about taking work off your hands. Sometimes it's simply having another person keeping an eye on the details so everything isn't relying on what's currently in your head.

3. You’ve become the bottleneck

This is a big one.

If everything needs to come through you, be checked by you, organised by you and followed up by you, there’s only so much the business can do at once.

And sometimes we create that bottleneck ourselves.

We tell ourselves:

I know where everything is.

It’ll take longer to explain it.

I’ll just quickly do it.

Which brings me nicely onto an entire other Note...

“It’s quicker if I do it myself.”

Sometimes it genuinely is.

But if you’re doing that same task every week, it’s probably worth questioning whether it still needs to be yours.

4. Your actual work keeps getting pushed back

This is probably the simplest test.

What did you start your business to do?

And how much of your week are you actually spending doing it?

If client work, business development, planning or simply having enough headspace to think keeps getting squeezed around admin and day-to-day operations, something needs to give.

Not necessarily all of it.

You don't need to wake up one morning and outsource half your business.

Start with the things taking the most time, causing the most friction or continually landing back on your list.

You don’t have to wait until you’re overwhelmed

I think there can be a tendency to see getting support as something you do once you're really busy.

But I'd rather help someone before they reach that point.

Sometimes it’s ten hours of ongoing support a month.

Sometimes it’s a CRM that needs sorting out.

Sometimes it’s six focused hours to finally clear a list that has been following you around for months.

The right time to outsource looks different for every business.

But if you recognised yourself in two or three of these, it might be worth looking at what you're still doing simply because you've always done it.

Tell me what’s sitting on your list →

This Note started life as a post I shared on LinkedIn.