Outsourcing plays an important part in productivity. We want to spend our precious time on the things that take us toward our goals, but there are always other tasks that need to be done, and those can be outsourced.
If you're at the beginning of your author journey, you might not think outsourcing is applicable to you, but it's important to consider because at some point, you’re going to realize that you want some of your time back and you’re willing to pay for help.
If you're further on in your writing career, this may be the most important chapter, because outsourcing is the only way you can achieve more in a creative business. Many people ask how I get so much done as an author entrepreneur, and although I do manage my time well, these days it’s all about automation of tasks and outsourcing to skilled freelancers.
If you want to be a successful author, you will need help at some point on the journey
[This is an excerpt from Productivity for Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize your Author Life, and Decide What Really Matters, available in ebook, print and audiobook formats.]
I resisted this for a long time. For the first five years of my author business, I did pretty much everything myself. I did hire freelance editors and cover designers but I learned how to build and manage my website, podcast and book marketing as well as all the other technical elements required for self-publishing. Part of that was due to budget, because I bootstrapped my business while working my day job, but I also felt the need to control everything and I was sure that no one else could do what I did as well as I could.
But over time, I found myself getting more and more overwhelmed. I didn't have time to do everything. I was writing more books, podcasting every week, blogging and running the business as well as speaking professionally, plus trying to exercise and maintain a happy marriage. My income had plateaued because I didn’t have enough time to work on the business as well as in the business. There were many aspects that had begun to feel like a job and I was on the edge of burn-out. Not what I imagined for my creative career. I didn’t have the extra money to outsource, but I knew I needed to find it to save my sanity.
Perhaps you know how this feels?
How could you automate or outsource tasks to free up your time?
My most recent team member is Carly, my inbox manager for The Creative Penn email account, which gets really busy every day with questions from writers. I only made that change in January 2019 because I was spending 8-10 hours a week doing email. I love helping people but something had to give! Carly does the triage and I answer anything personal or complicated, or anything from my Patrons on Patreon. So, if you are a member of my community, don’t worry, I am still here!
“It's better to disappoint a few people over small things than to surrender your dreams for an empty inbox.” Jocelyn K. Glei, Manage Your Day‑To‑Day
All these people are freelancers except for my husband, Jonathan. We are both directors and employees of the business, but everyone else is a freelancer, so the hours worked are a scalable expense depending on what people are needed for. It’s taken time to find the right people, but it’s made all the difference to my productivity and my happiness.
If you find the idea of outsourcing difficult, think about it in terms of productivity. How do you define a productive and successful author? How do you measure that? If it’s number of books written and published or number of books sold or income made per month, how do you give yourself more time to do that? Outsourcing is often the answer.
If you’re struggling with what to outsource, it’s time for self-examination.
Which zone are you working in most of the time?
I highly recommend reading The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, which talks about four different zones:
Zone of Incompetence: You're not good at this. Many other people can do this better.
Zone of Competence: You can do this but others can do it better.
Zone of Excellence: You’re skilled in this area and not many others can do it like you can.
Zone of Genius: No one else can do this but you.
Think about each of these zones for your situation and reflect on how you’re spending your precious time. Here are my examples.
Zone of Incompetence
I need an editor. I'm not ‘incompetent’ at self-editing, but I always need to work with an editor and I always have. Editing is definitely not my job, neither is proofreading, book cover design, graphic design, bookkeeping or accounting. Other people do those things well, so I definitely outsource those.
Zone of Competence
I format my ebooks with Vellum. It's so easy and I love it so I’ll continue to do that.
But formatting print books is not my job, because I'm just not detail-orientated enough. I've tried in the past and I've done a mediocre job. So, I outsource print formatting. I can do audio editing and podcast production. I did it for years, but others are better than me.
The same applies to formatting blog posts. I can do that, but should I be spending my time on that now? No, so my virtual assistant, Alexandra, does that for me and does a wonderful job.
Zone of Excellence
I'm a professional speaker. I’ve been paid to speak all over the world in the last decade and I get good feedback from my events. But although I continue to speak occasionally, I don’t want my business to revolve around speaking. That's not what I want to do with my life so it will only be occasional in the future.
Zone of Genius
I struggled with the word ‘genius’ at first. I thought “I’m not a genius at anything.” But it’s more about what you bring to the world that no one else can. That's what you should be spending your time on.
For me, it's writing my books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as podcasting. No one else has my personal experiences to share. No one else can write the books I write. No one else can podcast in the way that I do. Podcasting and voice are so intimate. It has to be my voice in your head. I also love to create in the written and audio formats.
So, writing and podcasting are aspects within my Zone of Genius, which is where I should be spending my time.
Sometimes you have to give up areas of Competence and Excellence in order to make time for your Zone of Genius.
Complete this exercise for your own situation. Are you spending more time in other zones than in your Zone of Genius? What can you do to focus on the things that only you can do?
This reframing of activities can help you to change the way you spend your time. Remember, productivity is about focusing on the things that you should be doing instead of filling your time with stuff that you shouldn't be doing.
What about the money?
Bootstrap at the beginning, do it yourself, but put some money away, start saving from your royalties or your day job or whatever else is funding your life. As your income grows, you can invest in learning more skills but also in outsourcing tasks to others.
It’s a false economy to do everything yourself, so think about it as an investment. Give yourself more time to create.
Ready to outsource? Follow these 8 steps
One of the biggest mistakes with outsourcing is trying to hire one person to do everything you can’t or don’t want to do. Chris Ducker, in his great book Virtual Freedom: How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business. addresses the myth of the ‘super VA,’ the idea that you can hire someone just like you.
It’s much better to work with people within their Zone of Excellence or Genius. For example, I wouldn’t use the same freelancer to design my book covers as I would to fix my WordPress website, or try and convince a fiction editor to work on editing my audiobooks. Keep this in mind as you go through the steps.
(1) Make a list of everything you do currently
If you are going ahead with outsourcing, then start by making a list of everything you do and group it into logical tasks. This is not so much your ‘To Do’ list but more the repetitive tasks that occur within your author business in each cycle of creativity.
Many authors think, “Oh, I'll just get someone to do my marketing.” But ‘marketing’ is a catch-all word, so you need to be more specific. For example, you might want someone to create infographics for Pinterest, or a freelance writer to create content for your blog, or someone to pitch book review bloggers and podcasters, or someone to schedule your Facebook posts. Each of these is a different task, so write down whatever you have on your list.
(2) Eliminate items from your list. What really needs doing?
Remember the quote from Gretchen Rubin, “The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.”
Now you need to go through the list again, because this time you will be paying someone else to do it. Do you really want to pay a virtual assistant $20-$40 an hour to schedule your Twitter stream or create shareable images for your blog when you have no traffic or income?
This is why most authors start with outsourcing the necessary tasks of editing and book cover design and then add aspects like building a website and setting up an email list before social media scheduling and marketing tasks.
(3) Write procedures or record videos of your current process
At this point, you might also consider automation. For example, I used to update plugins manually on my WordPress sites and considered outsourcing as it is a regular and repetitive task. But quotes were always high for what is generally a basic activity. Then my hosting service, WPEngine, introduced a tool that did this automatically which I immediately purchased, saving me from both manual work and the need to outsource.
The main thing to decide is whether to eliminate a task completely, automate it or write out a procedure and outsource it.
(4) Find virtual assistants and freelancers
Try the author community first. I found my wonderful virtual assistant, Alexandra, and my audio engineer, Dan, by asking for help on my podcast. They emailed me and that's how we ended up working together. I met my book cover designer, Jane, at an author event in the UK and now she's an important member of my extended freelance team. I joined InboxDone through Yaro Starak, who taught me about online business through his Blog Profits Blueprint, and started the company to help entrepreneurs like me.
You can find people in the same way. Maybe you're in an author Facebook group, or you could become a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, which has a partner member network. Find people you trust and ask for referrals.
Another good place to start is Reedsy which you can find at TheCreativePenn.com/reedsy
They have vetted professionals including editors, marketers, book cover designers, ghostwriters, website help, and all kinds of other freelancers who specialize in working with authors. You can also look at wider freelance networks like Upwork.com.
If you want to offer your services to authors, then I recommend applying to the Alliance of Independent Authors Partner Member list and also working with Reedsy, because then people know you've been vetted.
The following lists are made up of members from my community or recommended by them:
- Editors: TheCreativePenn.com/editors
- Book Cover Designers: TheCreativePenn.com/bookcoverdesign
- Formatting: TheCreativePenn.com/formatting
Please note that I have not worked with everyone on these lists personally so please do your due diligence.
(5) Interview first
Trust is so important to me because I’ve spent over a decade building my business and it’s my income, my reputation and everything I have created. I don't give anyone my Amazon login, my PayPal login, or access to my bank account, but clearly I am sharing access to my website and inbox which are sensitive. You can use services like LastPass.com to share logins and keep things partially secure, but at the end of the day, you have to find people you can trust, and interviewing is a key part of that.
(6) Communicate expectations up front and stay in touch
Once you've interviewed someone and you both decide to move forward, then make sure you document how you're going to work together, your respective responsibilities, communication, billing, updates and anything else.
A simple contract is the best thing to have with any freelancer. Many freelancers will have their own contracts, but if they don’t, you can document everything you've agreed and both sign it. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer and if you want to get legal help for specific contracts, then go ahead.
In terms of tools, I use Google Drive and Dropbox for sharing and working together on documents. I pay all my freelancers by PayPal if they are overseas or bank transfer if they are in the UK. You can use LastPass to share passwords with other people.
I would recommend starting with a small project, like a single article for your blog, or editing one chapter, or scheduling social media for a week in order to test out the process before committing for a longer period. This will enable you to build up trust over time.
(7) Be a good client
If you want great freelancers, then you need to be a good client. I pay immediately on receipt of the invoice because I want my wonderful freelancers to love working with me. I want to be one of their top clients, so I respect their skills, I let them do their work, thank them and pay quickly.
The best freelancers have a choice of people they can work with, so if you’re not a good client, they will find other work. Give constructive feedback, be positive, respect their expertise and, most importantly, pay on time.
You're using their brain and their time instead of yours. This is why outsourcing is a secret weapon for productivity.
Of course, they're going to do things differently than you and they may well do it better. You can coach them if they are not doing things exactly as you like, but often, they're going to be completely fine doing things on their own. That’s the point of outsourcing!
(8) Communicate
Communicate regularly in an open and honest way and beware of extended periods of non-response or silence. This could indicate trouble, so protect yourself and make sure you back everything important up regularly. Make sure you know how to revoke access and change passwords if necessary.
Be ready to let the freelancer go if things don't work. Early on in my outsourcing process, I tried to hire someone to do everything and inevitably we both ended up disappointed. Another time, I tried to negotiate a contract with a freelancer who took it the wrong way and we parted ways even before we started. This is just part of the process. Maybe you just don't work well together, maybe it's just the time is up. These things happen.
There are inevitable risks with opening up your processes and I understand the difficulties in letting things go, but you have to, or you'll never escape overwhelm, be more productive and grow your author business.
[This is an excerpt from Productivity for Authors: Find Time to Write, Organize your Author Life, and Decide What Really Matters, available in ebook, print and audiobook formats.]