Case Study: A Look Into What I've Outsourced Over My Business Journey
Case Study: A Look Into What I've Outsourced Over My Business Journey
Welcome to the Business E podcast. Last week on the podcast, I spoke about signs that you're ready to hire. If you haven’t listened to it yet, please do as it will help you identify if you are ready to hire.
In this episode, I am going to do a case study and walk you through my journey. This includes outsourcing, hiring, what mistakes I’ve made and how it worked for me and my business.
So, let’s dive in!
PINTEREST MANAGER
I have been in business since 2017 when I was at Uni and it’s crazy to think that I am in my sixth year of Business! I had a lot of spare time back then and didn’t need to hire. As I was new to business, I did hire and a lot of these were for experience and coaching. Therefore, the first hire I made was a business coach because I didn't know what I was doing or how to do it. I also outsourced some templates to help me with copy and how to market to different clients. So that was my first hire and if you would like a detailed journey of my subscriptions and tech, let me know.
HIRING A VIRTUAL ASSISTANT
I hired my first VA for around $1500 a month and I only had 6 clients. For me it was worth it because I knew I had this team member and so I had to scale really quickly. She was amazing and the timing was right for me. I hired her to help me make Pinterest templates for clients and also to help with some of my online blogs. Because I very quickly scaled I could then scale her hours. I had about 27 to 30 clients a month and my VA also managed my email clients.
So that was what hiring my first VA looked like.
After she left, I very quickly realised I had built my business around this amazing hire and I didn’t have as much time to devote to my Pinterest clients. I eventually let go of pretty much all Pinterest clients, but this was only part of the reason. I have previously shared my story before about this and how I felt a shift coming.
TEACHING AND BLOGGING
I wanted to go into education, so I just kept a few clients and that was for most of 2020. Whilst focusing on education, I realised that I missed services and that it was my best income stream. I wanted to have a service-based side to my business. I then decided to bring services back by way of blog management. I then made a hire, who actually was my mum. She was awesome and I hired her to do blog writing. She wrote all the blogs I edited them and then put them up. We didn't initially have many clients but started to grow and I brought on another blog writer. So, we kind of built the blogging up and that was my team.
INSTAGRAM AGENCY
My Instagram agency with my friend Elise, obviously is quite different. We hired initially for someone to help us with engagement, task, design and task capture. Now we have a team member who essentially runs a lot of that side type business and we just do the reviews. We also have team meetings and make sure that the strategy is good.
MARKETING & BRANDING
I have made a lot of hires for marketing and branding. For my brand photo shoot, there was some incredible photographers in my local area in Brisbane.
I've also hired branding support, so people helping me create my brand. I've also had other people help with logos. I am glad though that I didn't hire too early, I know who I am now and my business has evolved over time.
I have also worked with website designers and bought a lot of templates. I love the go live website templates, I think they're probably my favourite.
I have also hired copywriters to help like Kelsey, she’s amazing. My friend Elise Hodge is an amazing business partner. She's helped me a lot especially with the course and membership style emails.
I have also hired for other things like one off projects like dubsado setups, tech setups, all of those kinds of things.
BUSINESS COACHES
I have hired a lot of business coaches over my business journey. Each of them have been amazing. I've also done a lot of one-off kind of coaching from different people. In addition to all of that, I have invested in self-education through a few memberships that help choose trending audios for Instagram.
So, there's been some not-so-great hires, some bad investments, especially in the education space, but I've learnt from each of them. They have served a place because even if they weren't helpful, they helped me gain clarity.
So hopefully my journey in unpacking that has been helpful. If you have any specific questions though around a certain hire you are looking to do and are looking for recommendations let me know. My best hires have come from recommendations, which is the best way to find someone because there's already a level of trust there as well.
Hopefully, this has been helpful and I look forward to chatting with you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode and if you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to tag me on Instagram @withHannahandCo and share your biggest takeaway from this episode. I would love if you could leave a 5-star review as well. Those two actions mean more than you will ever know.
I can't wait to hang out you on next week's episode.
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