It’s been a good few years since the release of my book What The Freelance, where I take a deep dive into the benefits that come with outsourcing the right talent for your business.
Since then, the riveting content in my book has been turned into course material for tertiary institutions and made a positive, and noticeable, impact on those that have implemented this approach to improving their companies.
And now, with the pandemic, we’ve seen an even greater surge in the desire for freelancers to help save companies from crumbling to the ground, especially with so many of them having to either shut down completely or retrench significant portions of their staff just to survive.
It has certainly become more important than ever to acclimate to this way of doing things.
That being said, let me clarify how this approach works and why.
So Why Outsource?
Great question.
While outsourcing certainly isn’t a new concept, it’s gained a considerable amount of traction over the last 10 years, especially since Covid came into the picture. It’s also been proven to be a great option for both smaller and larger businesses – whether in their infancy or in their prime.
If implemented correctly, outsourcing can be highly beneficial to businesses that are struggling with revenues and tight budgets, stuck with very little staff and too much responsibility, or handling tasks that might be infrequent (marketing campaigns, blog posts, etc.)
It’s a proven approach that works, and has worked, for businesses for a long time now – especially for greater flexibility and reduced operational costs.
By using freelancers to fill more of the production roles in your business, you’re able to save a lot of extra time, resources and hassle that you would have to deal with when using a more traditional business model.
The 85/15 Rule
Traditionally, most businesses, agencies and consultancies use a core team of permanent staff that usually make up 85-90% of a company, while the remaining 10-15% of capacity was left for the occasional ad-hoc freelancer to fill any gaps.
Over time, a lot of smaller businesses have come to realise that they’d prefer to avoid relying on permanent staff and the costs associated with training, educating and retaining them and would rather opt for a far more flexible and agile overhead.
With the success rates that come with outsourcing, businesses are now swapping those ratios around, instead looking at around 85-90% of outsourced, freelance staff and leaving the remaining 10-15% as the core team to fill the most important roles within the company.
While freelancers are primarily used for production purposes (the product or creative output), the core team consists of roles in sales, account management, client liaison, product management (to also manage the freelancers), bookkeeping and project management.
As a business owner, it’s highly beneficial to focus on doing the jobs that you’re already skilled at, instead of wasting energy and productivity on things like filling out paperwork or dealing with other gruelling tasks that often take up too much time.
This usually results in you spending far more energy on the core processes of the business, getting much more done, while saving precious resources, time, effort and money.
The Benefits Of Outsourcing
Taking this approach to business means that you’ll have far more advantages, especially in the early stages of starting it out.
Firstly, you’re given far more flexibility where staff are concerned, as you’re able to make huge savings on picking freelancers as opposed to permanent employees. The cost of time and money to educate and train, as well as pay salaries, benefits and bonuses to staff (when you might not always require them) can be a major disadvantage.
So if demand dries up for whatever period of time, then you don’t need to keep too many permanent employees on the payroll – which leaves your cash reserves far more protected and readily available for other important and fruitful investments.
Secondly, it can be a huge advantage to your clients. Without the need to solely rely on internal staff to produce the best possible results for a particular client, you’re given far more access to experts and professionals in any field, at any given time.
Say a client requires someone to work on advertising or branding for a niche operation, but your current staff are trained, experienced and only used to handling one area of expertise – you’re given the opportunity to outsource someone that is already great at producing work for that particular niche and who would be capable of providing superb results for that client.
It also allows for the use of a pure strategy that doesn’t have your business making promises to fulfil client requests, regardless of whether or not your staff are capable of doing the job correctly.
It’s a win-win situation for both your business and the client.
Your business might offer to have the right people for the job but aren’t necessarily equipped to handle it in the best way, whereas with freelancers, you can find the ideal person/team to do the work and produce results according to what the client needs.
There are a number of other valuable benefits that come with this approach to business, such as access to world-class experience and expertise, the freeing up of resources that can be used in other areas to make more money, the reduction of risks that come with retrenchments and lay-offs and help in dealing with difficult operations and processes.
By implementing a similar approach to your business, you’re bound to reap far more rewards and opportunities that would be difficult to achieve if you kept to the traditional way of doing things.
Take a hard look at your business and figure out whether there’s room to outsource and find the right type of freelancer to fulfil certain roles far better than a permanent staff member might be able to.
If you need some more advice or guidance to go about implementing this in the best possible way, feel free to contact me.
I mean, I wrote the book after all. 🙂
My coaching expertise is ideal for ANY business owner that has an unrelenting desire for success, comfort and progress.
You know what to do:
Pick up the phone, save my number and email address, and make contact.
+2783 253 3339
