5 Heavyweight Tasks Small Businesses, Solopreneurs & Creatives Should Outsource
Free yourself up to smash your working week
Stanley Green, The Protein Man: London’s solopreneur human billboard.
But first, a short tale about doing it all :
Oxford Street's solopreneur human billboard.
As a teenager, I had a Saturday job in Wedgwood on Oxford Circus in the heart of London's West End. Wedgwood was a four-storey emporium of glittering, expensive china and glassware.
Across Oxford Circus was glamorous, noisy Top Shop. I'd slink over there to spend my wages on something a bit too slutty for a 15-year-old, hoping I didn't catch the eye of the walking billboard bloke, aka The Protein Man, because I suspected he had the power to read my disgusting, deviant teenage mind.
A little knowledge is a protein shake’s nightmare.
For 25 years until 1993, rain or shine, The Protein Man, Stanley Green, travelled daily from Ealing to patrol London's West End with his placard.
He walked London's busiest streets, advertising dire warnings that protein would lead to unrestrained lust, and selling his home-made anti-lust booklets.
The folks at Huel would be choking.
Stanley Green and zero outsourcing.
Stanley Green was a frugal, lean, one-person evangelist, marketeer, publishing house, ad agency and bookseller.
He scraped by, selling his booklets for pennies, and spreading the word with missionary zeal.
His placard was handmade.
He wrote all his content.
His booklets rolled off his home printing press – clumsily typeset, grammatically inconsistent and factually erroneous, but laden with, hmm… passion.
He sold his booklets directly to the public from his satchel.
Nothing was outsourced. De nada.
Graphic designers and grammar pedants – avert your gaze.
Dedicated to the cause and not the aesthetics, Stanley glued hand-cut white paper letters - all UPPERCASE - onto his placard.
He'd inexpertly play with the kerning and line spacing, especially when lentils became a specific 'thing'. He squished 'LENTILS' on the list next to 'BEANS'.
A sample booklet swung below the main placard like pants on a washing line.
Small business owners are not jacks of all trades.
Stanley Green stuck to what he knew. If we ignore the horrendous scientific inaccuracies, his business was gloriously uncomplicated. His message was singular, and showing up was what counted.
He unintentionally achieved a fond celebrity status among Londoners and tourists.
Imagine him now, but with Instagram. There'd be no stopping him.
Stanley was the wacky embodiment of a spirited solopreneur. But those were simpler times and he was on his very own mission. Nowadays, business is incredibly complicated. It's bloody noisy out there, in the digital ether.
Trying to do it all puts you on the fast track to overwhelm, and will suck the joy out of your business.
Friend. It’s time to call in the troops.
…Scroll down to find out who and how…
Increase Your Earning Power By Outsourcing These Five Heavyweight Tasks
Your glorious spawn of a business deserves your devoted attention. You’ve birthed and nurtured it, ffs.
Outsourcing the most complex and time-heavy tasks to experts frees you up to concentrate on being fabulous in your niche.
For maximum impact, here's the cherry-picked dream team:
1.- Web Designer
What a coincidence. I’m a website designer extraordinaire! Stay with me for a second, and let me enlighten you:
Despite the adverts claiming you can build a website in hours, the reality is that it will take weeks to build a website you'll feel totally insecure about.
Then, you'll be forever dipping in and out of the frontend tweaking stuff, and diving into backend, wondering when you'll find time to deal with broken links, fretting about what the hell a 4XX page is and why your connection to Google My Business isn't working. Oh, the horror.
My niche is building websites in either of my two favourite platforms: Squarespace or Wix. I take care of the copywriting, design and website architecture with composed expertise.
Post-launch, my clients choose to either:
Manage the website themselves and call me when they need help.
Leave me to run and update the website regularly.
If you still don't believe you need a pro web designer, check this out.
2. Social Media Expert
If you're acing your socials, skip this one.
If you find it stressful and time-heavy, you would benefit from a social media crackajack in your inner circle. Social media takes skill. Your cousin's kid who's got 10,000 followers on TikTok isn't going to cut it for your business.
Take the time to find a freelance social media manager or consultant who will wiggle right under the skin of your business and who gets you.
A client recently told me that an ansty love-hate relationship with her social media manager had turned to love-respect when increased engagement and strong brand presence became apparent. The ROI spoke for itself.
The client learned to let go, lean in, and trust the process.
So, carefully choose a niche freelancer, agency or versatile specialist who knows your sector, then take a deep breath… and delegate your social media strategy, content creation, schedules and analytics.
Believe me, you’ll know if it’s working!
3. Copywriter / SEO Writers / Bloggers / Video Script Writers / Long Content Creators
Again! That's me, shamelessly promoting myself and my sector. Stay with me:
When even a headline can make all the difference to your online traffic, the quality and originality of your content is tantamount.
Google crawls the web seeking and prioritising original content.
Polished and engaging blogs, newsletters, website copy and articles take time – which is why expert human writers exist – and why I'm busy.
We can ghostwrite your LinkedIn and social bios, craft your long content, and help develop your brand voice. Look out for writers who can SEO the pants off your content.
Yawn. I have to mention AI because I can spot an AI piece in a gnat's pixel.
First, AI content has a strange bland, robotic quality, often littered with poor grammar.
Secondly, because it regurgitates information scraped from the internet, most AI written content doesn't pass plagiarism checks. 😱 (Cue fake shock).
4. SEO Expert
SEO is a dark and mysterious art and the most challenging thing for an amateur to master. It pays to bring an expert into your inner circle. They can also collaborate with your web developer and copywriter.
SEO expertise doesn't have to break the bank, and you have choices:
Many SEO experts offer one-off audits for a set fee. They'll give you a report and pointers on how you can improve things yourself. Some savvy SEO experts provide monthly membership programmes for the DIYers among you who also want support.
SEO is a slow burn, so outsource the whole caboodle to a bona fide specialist or agency. Monthly subscriptions and plans vary, so shop around.
You might think SEO is all about dry, techy data, but SEO experts have feelings and hearts, ya know. There’s true craftsmanship to optimising the pants off your content, so choose a versatile expert who cares about you and your business.
5. Human Resources
HR is a world of forms and paperwork. Most small businesses can cope – just about – but employment law is complex, and mistakes can be costly and even litigious.
If you run into a problem with an employee, you'll be self-flagellating because you didn’t have an expert onside.
An HR specialist will have your back with hiring (screening, job descriptions and running background checks), apprentice and internships schemes, compliance, payroll, performance management and exit procedures.
What I appreciate most about the HR specialists in my orbit is that they absolutely love the jobs I hate, and I’m not exaggerating!
