We all know the old clichés of ‘business owners need to wear many hats’ or ‘death by admin’. And we’ve also been told about the 80/20 rule. 80% of revenue comes from 20% work or customers. So how do business owners get out of the mindset of needing to do everything – accounting, marketing, selling - and into the mindset of successful business owners that have freedom?

The key? Outsource.

We talked to business strategist Clive Morley from I.AM.Strategist, who writes business and marketing plans.

“Whilst bookkeeping & accounting have long been outsourced, they have been joined by a number of other crucial services. You can build an entire digital marketing department within a few clicks, hire a part-time CFO that works remotely or have an outsourced full-time graphic designer at a fraction of the cost of a local one.”

This is especially useful in places like Australia where staff wages are extremely high. A Sydney based graphic designer can earn $60 - $100k a year whereas an outsourced overseas designer of similar quality may earn less than ½ of that.

Here’s a list of our top 10 services to outsource

1.Accountant / bookkeeping - Every business needs accurate and compliant record keeping, tax returns and lodgements. Only very large companies will need full-time staff so most business should consider outsourcing this. Accounting software like Xero makes this efficient and affordable.

2.Legal / contracts - There are virtual legal firms that offer high quality tailored advice for fixed loe costs – welcome news to many small business owners that need assistance with employment contracts, leases and sales agreements.

3 .Recruitment - Writing job ads, interviewing, hiring, training and processing can be extremely time consuming and negatively impact productivity. Perfect for the time poor business owner, outsource this to someone who is experienced in finding great people.

4.CFO - A lot of businesses aren’t even aware of what a Chief Financial Officer can do let alone dream to hire one. There are a number of outsourced CFO services now available with many tax accountants also offering business advice. Financial strategies are often overlooked but managing cashflow, growth and minimising risk should never be overlooked.

5.Website / Design - The key to finding a great designer is looking through their work and finding a style that you like. Te biggest mistake you can make is placing a square peg in a round hole. Designers tend to have a certain style. Make a list of websites that you would like to emulate and go from there.

6.Copywriting - Poorly written copy is a major turn off for both customers and employees. It needs to capture the imagination of the reader and engage but remain on brand, convey information and be error free. The DIY copywriter may not understand the importance of great wording or worse yet, understand what’s good or bad.

7.Social media - There have been some major changes to Facebook & Instagram’s algorithms in the last few years which means social media, as a marketing tool, is often the biggest missed opportunity. When doe well, it’s still an extremely powerful tool.

8.Marketing - The trouble business owners may experience when hiring a marketing manager in-house is they lack the experience and skills to manage that person. How would the business owner know if the marketing manager had deployed a successful strategy? Is a decision being made based on ratio of wages to marketing spend? Is the in-house person able to save money on other services like reception staff?

If an in-house marketing staff member cost the business $50k per year and the annual ad spend was $50k per year then that’s $100k total spend with 50% on ads. Now consider outsourcing that same ad spend to an agency whose % fees may be 20%. For the same annual budget, you can increase the ad spend to $80k.

9.Your own services - It’s called white labelling. Find a resource that can do what you do better and cheaper and outsource the work to them. It’s a great way for businesses to take on more work without the added pressure of production, wage, premises costs.

10.Yourself! - Anyone listening to the Freakanomics podcast recently would have heard the interview with Richard Branson. He has suggested that business owners can really benefit from finding someone ‘better’ than themselves to run their business. This frees up the entrepreneur to focus on something new. Branson himself isn’t the CEO of any Virgin company which means he’s free to work on the next big thing.