[00:00:00] Emma: Where do you need more support in your business or at home so you can focus on your business? That's my question. Because once you've done the planning process that I spoke about last week, and if you haven't, go back, do the planning process.
[00:00:13] The trick is to work out the things that need to keep happening in your business. that you don't like to do and then figure out a way to outsource them. So I outsource a lot of things at Team McQueen. I outsource my socials. provide the content, but I outsource my socials. I'm not very creative. So all the graphics and all the bits and pieces.
[00:00:34] Yuck, yuck, yuck. I outsource my Facebook ads. I am not an expert. Get rid of that thing. Give it to someone else. I outsource our on the ground event coordination and finding venues, et cetera, to my amazing events person, Steph LaCure from Carter Co. Go give her a follow. I find the experts in the field And then I outsource to them rather than me trying to do it all and trying to do a really bad job.
[00:01:04] Sometimes it's worth outsourcing in order to spend more time building your business and staying in your zone of genius than trying to struggle with a Canva template for an hour, trying to work out an email sequence when you're not very good at that. All those things drive me bananas. I had a client who was trying to do all the things.
[00:01:25] She was trying to do all the things and she had a great business. And one of her goals was to get on more podcasts, but she had been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. She didn't know where to start. We agreed that outsourcing the research to a professional would be a way to start.
[00:01:41] She would need to be very clear about what she wanted and then she left it in the hands of a professional. So we hatched a plan. We worked out the questions that she would ask someone. We looked at sites like Fiverr and Upworks and we selected someone who was an expert at podcast [00:02:00] research. Amazing. She was astonished by the results.
[00:02:03] She got an Excel spreadsheet with 200 podcasts within her target market to approach. Not only that, she got an email address to message. She got a link to the podcast so she could have a listen and she got a definition as to why they had selected it. It was so, so good. And. The beautiful thing, it was delivered within a week.
[00:02:26] It was delivered within a week. And the best bit, it cost her a hundred bucks. If you don't have a hundred bucks to do that kind of research, that kind of research, if you are not a researcher, would take you forever, This is just one example of one task you can outsource.
[00:02:43] Was she stoked? You bet your bottom dollar she was stoked. She was like, whoop, whoop. Now she's got to do the next step. Now. The next step could be that she could outsource the pitching to someone else. She does not need to do that bit, but that's in the next discussion to have, right? Sometimes I think we go, Oh, I want to get on 200 podcasts and it looks so big.
[00:03:04] We're like boiling the ocean. If we broke it down and went, right, we want to get on 200 podcasts, but let's break it down. What do we need first? Well, we need the podcasts. Then what do we need? We need a script to send to people. Or we need a who to send it to. To do the script, to send people. And then what do we need?
[00:03:18] And then you just work in logical order of what you need. I'm going to stop there for a minute because you know, you could double speed me and then I sound like a chipmunk and ask you this, What gaps in support do you have that need to be filled? How can they be filled? I've got a little exercise for you because, you know, I love my homework and I love practical exercises. All right, grab a piece of paper, A4 piece of paper, grab a cup of tea, grab a pen, draw a line, smack bang down the middle.
[00:03:50] On the left hand side, I want you to do a brain dump right down all the things that you need support with. It might be work related. It might be business related. It [00:04:00] might be home related. Doesn't matter. Just go ahead and do a brain dump on the left hand side of the piece of paper. Now once you've exhausted that and my chances are once you get thinking you'll think of a ton of stuff to outsource But once you feel like you've done that I want you to look at the right hand side and think about the support that you need that would manage the piece on the left.
[00:04:23] Yeah. So where can you get the support from simply just doing the left hand exercise will help you work out what you can outsource and the right hand side should be who or how you can outsource. I'll give you an example on the home front for me. At the beginning of 2024, the year that we're in, I had a gap.
[00:04:44] I had a gap because I knew that sometimes my corporate clients needed me on a Wednesday and Wednesday is a pickup, a drop off and pick up from school and a snack and then swimming. I knew that. So I needed to find someone who would be able to collect Evie from school. Bring her home for a snack, take her to swimming.
[00:05:03] I found a wonderful lady called Barbie. Barbie is retired, but she loves beautiful handbags to help me with that. I'm quite sure Barbie doesn't listen to this, but Barbie, if you do so much gratitude to you, Evie and Barbie have the most beautiful relationship. It's like a grandma and a granddaughter relationship.
[00:05:22] I come home and I say to Evie, what did you and Barbie talk about today? And she'll say, Oh mom, Barbie, Barbie used to be a model. Barbie showed me how to do, a cat walk move. Do you want to see it? Or Barbie told me about her grandkids or Barbie showed me photos of this or Barbie talked about her cat.
[00:05:40] Evie loves cats And that has been a game changer for us. I can completely trust Barbie. She. Loves Evie. She brings Evie little gifts, doesn't need to, but brings her little gifts, and I know that she's in safe hands. Now I found Barbie through just a babysitting app, I [00:06:00] grilled a few of the people that had responded to my ad and Barbie was excellent.
[00:06:06] Barbie came over, had a cup of tea with us beforehand to see if her and Evie would get on. And she met myself and she met my husband. and that just was a tiny bit of effort at the start of the year.
[00:06:16] And that's been a game changer for us.
[00:06:18] Also on the home front, I do drop off and pick up for school on a Monday, Wednesday and a Friday. And one of Evie's friend's mum was struggling with an injury, which meant she was struggling to get her kid to school. One of her daughters. And I offered and she said yes. And now I swing past Monday, Wednesday, Friday, collect her daughter and drop her daughter off.
[00:06:40] It's no skin off my nose. We're practically drive straight past. It helps another mum out and the girls love it. It's like win, win, win. Sometimes it pays to offer and sometimes it pays to be generous, right? You do what you can do with what you've got. So. What do you need? Do you need a cleaner to lighten the load?
[00:07:01] Do you need a meal delivery service? Do you need a more frequent meal delivery service? I had a client who hit a target in her business, a number target, a revenue target. And when she got that, she hired a chef. She hired a chef to create beautiful meals for her family. And the chef came once a week, did the menu prep, went and bought everything, made all the meals and they were done.
[00:07:25] Perfect. Do you need to switch to online grocery ordering so you don't have to go to the shops? Like, what are the things that really bug you that you need to get sorted? One of the things we do here at Team McQueen is book my hair appointments. It sounds so random, doesn't it? But at the beginning of the year, Serena, who's my business manager, she rings my hairdresser.
[00:07:47] I have had my hairdresser for 20 years, ladies. So, you know, you stick with a good hairdresser, don't you? and they book in quarterly sessions for me. Now it takes three hours to get this hair done. So it's quite the effort. [00:08:00] So she rings Adriana, Adriana books me in for the entire year. I know it sounds a bit OCD, but it works for us knowing it's in the diary, right?
[00:08:11] I do the same with our dog grooming. I set his grooms for the year and then I can forget about it. And I do forget about it because my memory is not very good. I do the same for eye tests, for boobie checks, my mammograms, for doctor's appointments, for optometry appointments. Some won't let you book in that far out, but for those that do, I absolutely do that.
[00:08:32] Where else can you get help from? We don't have any grandparents per se, but between the school mums, we found a little community and there's a community of local business owners who help each other out as well. Where else can you swap? When Evie was really little, I swapped with another new mum and we had date night a month, Now, unfortunately, this is the mums picking it up, right? So. You know, there was that, but it meant that we could each go out on a date night a month. And that worked really well for us. This is all about setting yourself up for success. It's about being clear on the help you need because you need to have the clarity, but also knowing that people won't do it your way.
[00:09:14] So if I ask someone to help me out, I can't expect that they will do it the same way that I do it. So I need to either be happy with that or do that myself. I am not a control freak, so I'm like, you do you. Thank you for helping me. Most people are very keen to help out if you just ask them, what does this trigger for you?
[00:09:32] Do you need to look at more outsourcing in your business, at home, in your life in general? What is it that you need support with and how can you get that support? I would encourage you as you set yourself up for the next year to think about what little things are you doing where actually your time could be spent elsewhere and what things are you doing where if you hand it over to a professional, you might get a better job.
[00:09:57] It might save you a stack of cash in the long run [00:10:00] and it frees you up to do other stuff in your business. I hope this episode has helped. Until next time. See you soon.
