Outsourcing domestic tasks makes better business: True or false?

[Lucy Kippist]

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I loved every word of this post from Denise Duffield-Thomas, a mother of three and a successful (read millionaire) entrepreneur.

And that’s mostly because she claims that investing in domestic help rather than staff for her business, fuelled her success and her satisfaction.

She writes:

“I’ve found that home help is SO MUCH MORE useful to me than adding more employees to my company. Business is the fun stuff, and I can automate a lot of that.”

I found reading it a breath of fresh air – but made me wonder if anyone else shares that experience?

What tasks do you outsource in your business and at home that make the most difference to your output and success?

[bb1]

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Lucy Kippist, post: 263451, member: 98720 wrote:

What tasks do you outsource in your business and at home that make the most difference to your output and success?

It really depends on the quality of the business you outsource to, obviously I like it when they outsource garden services, as thats my game. A quick estimate is that 50% of my clients are business’s who have outsourced to me.

But on the flip side, the number of my clients and friends who went down the outsourcing track for book keeping (me included), and have now insourced it again is large, due to the poor quality of book keepers due slowness, obvious error rates, lack of concern, and even rip off’s.

Just from my experience in the corporate world in a previous life, the only real benefit of outsourcing was making it look like you had less numbers on the books, and less staff management issues, but the costs were high, and the care for your business was zero.

So outsourcing has it’s benefits, but can also have huge impacts on your business, if you have incompetent people.

[LucasArthur]

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Okee Dokee,

Personally, i can see the advantage of outsourcing domestic stuff so you can focus on the business stuff.. its the old equation of what is your time worth? If you can earn $200 per hour in your own business, and employ someone to do house cleaning for $30 per hour, why would you clean your own home and potentially lose an hours revenue time which equates to $200 per hour? Take out the $30 for domestic stuff, and you are up $170 and have clean domicile

Everything is relative, and IMO, i tend to find these old adages rewrapped in order to add new flavour to an old recipe (that my chef prepared, of course)…

The issue is, if you outsource your domestic duties, do you lose touch with reality.. Or even extend yourself too much at work with no social downtime and head towards a burnout.

Everything is about balance, and doing what you enjoy as opposed to the one thing.. Me, i could sit at work 24×7 and have someone do everything domestically, kids runs, cleaning, cooking, dealing with the wife and ensuing arguments from being at work 24×7 and more..

But i get the point..

Jason Ramage | Lucas Arthur Pty Ltd | E: [email protected]   P: 61 3 8324 0344    M: 61 412 244 888

[Johny]

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It seems like a no brainer to spend your time where it will be the most effective and allocate other tasks ( in this case domestic work) to someone else.

It is interesting though in the context of what this lady does, which is promote herself as a “buy my book”, “do my course” doyen of improving the value/price of the services one offers.

Given the number of franchises around these days dedicated to domestic work, I wonder if any of these “entrepreneurs” are taking her tutorage and asking for more money in providing their services. If she is really successful in her job she may not be able to afford someone else to do her domestic work..

(Edit: Geez, I looked up her website and now she is all over my computer screen wherever I go.)

[bb1]

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Johny, post: 263455, member: 34822 wrote:

Given the number of franchises around these days dedicated to domestic work, I wonder if any of these “entrepreneurs” are taking her tutorage and asking for more money in providing their services.

Wow putting franchise and Entrepreneur in the same sentence is a real oxymoron.

I think Jason’s answer of using $30 an hour to clean house is interesting, if you use the ATO benchmarks, house cleaners are living below poverty levels. It is obvious they are not taking her advise, and I bet if they did the average small business person would object loudly.

[LucasArthur]

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bb1, post: 263456, member: 53375 wrote:

Wow putting franchise and Entrepreneur in the same sentence is a real oxymoron.

I think Jason’s answer of using $30 an hour to clean house is interesting, if you use the ATO benchmarks, house cleaners are living below poverty levels. It is obvious they are not taking her advise, and I bet if they did the average small business person would object loudly.

Just FYI, figures I used were just examples – not fact checked

Happy Saturday

Jason Ramage | Lucas Arthur Pty Ltd | E: [email protected]   P: 61 3 8324 0344    M: 61 412 244 888

[Yellow Door Digital]

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I’ve outsourced some domestic tasks which means I can be more present at home with the kids when I am home. It works for me and my family.

[1Source]

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Chances are you’re already outsourcing some business tasks, such as payroll administration or background and criminal checks for employment. And these days, almost any task can be outsourced, with so many qualified professionals leaving the corporate world to work as freelancers or contractors. However, just because you can outsource a task doesn’t mean you should.

“Don’t outsource something just because you don’t want to do it,” says Jim Lanzalotto, principal at Scanlon Louis, a marketing and strategic outsourcing company. “Sometimes there are things you don’t want to do but they are important to your core business.”

Before choosing which tasks you can farm out, take a hard look at your business and determine your strengths and values. “Small businesses must identify their core competencies and capabilities and focus their own R&D, talent management and resources on being the best in their industry at these,” says Marc Resnick, Ph.D., a small business consultant and director of the Institute for Technology Innovation at Florida International University. “Outsourcing any aspect of [these tasks] would be a big mistake because they would cease to offer anything that their own customers couldn’t get elsewhere. So a small business that focuses on product design should not outsource anything related to developing its internal design talent or their design activities. But they should investigate all opportunities for outsourcing tangential processes like payroll services, IT and so on.

[Author]

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