How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

Ep 3 How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. [00:01:00] Thanks for joining me this week on the next episode of the Audacious Empires podcast. I am Leanne Woff and I am super excited to be talking to you about outsourcing. Today we are chatting all things how can outsourcing your operations help you grow your business. Let’s get stuck 

Firstly, We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing. So there’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about in this episode can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant.

I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained.[00:02:00] Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Alright, the second thing. Is. A question that I get asked a lot is can you really outsource your operations? It’s a day to day function. There are lots of moving parts. How can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes. And I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. So, I Want to tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, I know that I need help, but I just [00:03:00] can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations. And so we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means.

And how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. And when you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, It can be hard for you to picture what it really means.

And so I spoke to this lead and I explained, you know, when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. And so we do things like we use project management tools and we [00:04:00] have set meetings and we have.

 Different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, like really clearly, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. And after that When I was chatting to this lead, they were very much okay, got it. I think I’ve wrapped my head around it.

She believed me. It could actually be done. Total one. And then she said, I think it is just, I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere. And so [00:05:00] if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end of this episode, I hope that you have a little bit more understanding.

On why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested. I’m going to walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are space, time and money. No matter how many conversations I have with people.

When they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money. Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want. It’s about growth in those areas. And outsourcing your operations will give you those.

 Let’s break each one down. So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space? When you are running operations [00:06:00] yourself, It can be very overwhelming. Now, like I said before, managing operations, there is a lot going on. It does not, it’s no small feat managing a, seven figure business.

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. And that is okay. But it means it takes a lot of energy and Thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them. And so when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose Your air and your freedom. And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your [00:07:00] brain can’t process properly. I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

And I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way. That they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make. And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human. And that’s okay. But the consequence of that is, you lose. All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

 You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day to day moving forward. How does outsourcing your operations give you more space? Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.[00:08:00] There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them.

They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. And it creates brain space. Now brain space breathes.  Creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate.

It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. And so outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

Okay, so the next thing. Outsourcing your operations will give you back more [00:09:00] time. Time is a little bit different to space. And something that you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. And I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome. From operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries.

You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done. And you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is, like, there’s measurable benefit from that. Okay, 

if you have some time back let’s take away All of that coordination, tasking. So when you’re [00:10:00] looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway.

So that’s the first thing. Let’s think about how much time that might take us. And then the second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with a zero issues, 100 percent of the time. The cogs will not spin with zero issues, 100 percent of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology.

You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100 percent perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to [00:11:00] do. Let’s pull that away. What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure They’re running as they should and tracking to their goals.

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. And it might be time that you don’t even realise you’re spending right now. I know when we were working with one client, we started working with them and we calculated how much time they were spending in operations. And it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous.

Like it was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and They just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard. And when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to [00:12:00] their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour. Purely because that’s what we do every day. And there was somebody else who could deal with a lot of those things. It did not have to be them. What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast. All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back. And it might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo.

Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book. Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

And then the final thing that we’re going to look at Is [00:13:00] outsourcing your operations increases revenue. It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations.

So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in. So not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed.

You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a [00:14:00] little bit haphazard.

There’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations. As a strategically. Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability.

And It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. Hey, we have customers that always ask this question.

Maybe we can send them a video once they buy this product and it explains it. And then maybe We can, instead of following people up when it’s time [00:15:00] to reorder, we can set up automations. Or, at this point in time, this is when people drop off and we stop hearing from them. Maybe we can put something in place.

To get them back to being engaged. Oh, I’ve noticed that when we do this kind of promotion, we get lots of inquiries. I’m getting lots of emails. so There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it. And when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that Is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. You tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way.

And that’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. And so you miss the opportunities. To increase client experience, [00:16:00] to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. And I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role.

They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? And from the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps. And I said, I know. And I don’t know how you’re going to do it, because the expectation was unrealistic.

Because even though we can see something as just [00:17:00] admin, it doesn’t end up being that. And if you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

And you’ll start to see the revenue from it.

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help you, it will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

And if you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at [00:18:00] Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. You can go to audaciousempires.com. And send your questions through, and I will answer it. Thanks so much, everybody. 

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