How to Work Out What to Outsource (When You Don't Know Where to Start)

As a business owner, your time is your most valuable resource. Yet, too often, we find ourselves bogged down by tasks that, while essential, don't necessarily require our unique expertise or creative input. This means you become less productive, resulting in less of your precious time being dedicated to working on high-value tasks, which ultimately is detrimental for business growth.

Not to be too doom and gloom about it, inefficiencies then start to creep in as your once adequate systems and procedures start to creak under the strain.

The solution of course is to outsource. But if you've ever sat down meaning to figure out what to hand off in your business, only to end up staring at a blank page, you're not alone. In fact, it’s one of the most common conversations I have with business owners. They know, on some level, that they're doing too much. They know outsourcing would help. But when it comes to actually deciding what to let go of, they freeze.

It makes sense. When you've built something from scratch, every task feels important, or at least familiar. Untangling "things only I can do" from "things I've just always done myself" is harder than it sounds, especially when you're too close to your own business to see it clearly.

The real problem isn't outsourcing. It's clarity - and I have built a little thing to help.

Most business owners aren't reluctant to delegate because they don't trust anyone else, or because they think a VA can't do the job. The real issue is upstream of that, they simply haven't taken the time to map out what they're actually spending their hours on, week to week. And without that map, it's almost impossible to know where to start.

You might already know, but I had adapted Chris Ducker 3 Lists to Freedom framework to create my task outsourcing worksheet. The idea is simple. Every task in your business falls into one of three categories:

• List 1 — Must do yourself. The things only you can do: client delivery, strategic decisions, anything that genuinely needs your specific expertise.

  
  

• List 2 — Could delegate. Tasks you might enjoy, but that aren't the best use of your time. A VA could do these just as well, freeing you up for List 1.

  
  

• List 3 — Should outsource now. The admin, the inbox, the book-keeping , tasks you can't, shouldn't, or simply dislike doing, that someone else could pick up almost immediately.

Once you can see your work sorted into these three lists, the fog usually lifts. Suddenly it's obvious what's eating your time for no good reason. I often suggest doing it the old fashioned way i.e. printing the list out and keeping it on your desk and noting down a task as you finish it.

Putting numbers to the problem

Here's the part that tends to land hardest with people: when you actually calculate what those List 2 and List 3 tasks are costing you, the numbers are often bigger than expected.

Take a simple example. Say you charge £100 an hour for client work, and you spend an hour a day on email, scheduling, and general admin (ie tasks a VA could easily take off your plate). At my rate of £35 an hour, and effectively a £65 loss every single hour you spend doing the work yourself. Stretch that across a working week and you're looking at hundreds of pounds in lost billable time, week after week, just from tasks that don't need to be done by you at all.

It adds up faster than people expect. A few hours of admin a week at a typical client rate can easily run into well over a thousand pounds a month in lost billable time and that's before you account for the energy and focus admin drains away from the work that actually grows your business. Compare that to outsourcing the same hours to a VA, and the gap between "what it costs me to do this myself" and "what it costs to hand it over" is usually the moment the decision becomes obvious.

I've built a free interactive tool!

This is exactly why I built the cost calculator into the tool, so instead of guessing at the gap, you can see your own numbers, based on your own rate and your own task list, in black and white.

My free interactive tool walks you through this exact process, step by step. You tell it your hourly rate, list out everything you do in a typical week, sort each task into List 1, 2, or 3 and it shows you, in real numbers, what doing it all yourself is actually costing you, and what you'd save by handing the right things over.

It takes about five minutes, and you'll come away with a clear, prioritised list of what to outsource first, ready to bring to a discovery call if you decide you're ready to take that step. And there’s even a download you can keep because I’m nice like that!

If you'd rather work through this on paper first, my task outsourcing worksheet covers the same 3 Lists framework in a printable format, pick whichever way suits how you think best.

Why this matters before you even talk to me

Here's something I'll be honest about: I'm not a fairy godmother. I can't wave a wand over your business and magically know what's eating your time or what you'd be comfortable handing over. As good as I'd love to be, I can't read minds.

What I can do is work fast and well once you're clear on what you need. The clients who get the most value out of working with me are the ones who come to that first conversation already knowing roughly what they want off their plate. That's not a barrier to entry, it's just how good delegation works, with anyone, whether that's me, another VA, or any freelancer you bring on. The clearer the brief, the better the outcome, every time.

That said, this isn't a one-way street once we start working together. Knowing what you want to outsource at the outset doesn't mean the conversation stops there. Once I'm actually in your business and working alongside you, I'll naturally spot things you might not have flagged yourself, a clunky process, a system that could be automated, an area where a small tweak would save you hours. I'll always raise those when I see them. The clarity up front just means we get to that point faster, rather than spending the first few weeks figuring out what you do at all.

That's exactly why this tool exists. It's not a replacement for a conversation with me, it's the groundwork that makes that conversation actually productive, so we're not spending your discovery call trying to figure out what you do all day. You'll have already done that part.

A quick word on when outsourcing isn't the answer anymore

There's also a flip side worth mentioning. As your business grows and the hours you're handing over start creeping up, there comes a point where the maths can tip the other way. If you're regularly outsourcing twenty, thirty, or more hours a week, that bill starts to look a lot like a salary and at that point, it might genuinely be worth asking whether a part-time employee makes more sense than a VA. I've written more about exactly this in Virtual Assistant (or Freelancer) vs Employee, covering when each option tends to make more sense, and what to weigh up if you ever find yourself there.

Try the tool, see what it shows you, and if the numbers make you sit up a little that's usually a sign you're more than ready for the next step. Book a free 30-minute discovery call and let's talk about what reclaiming that time could look like for you.