I remember the day clearly. It was February 2011 and I had just finished adding a Google campaign that had 2 sub-campaigns and 4 different Google ads. Why do I remember it so clearly? Because it took only 35 minutes which is nothing short of a miracle. The last time I had set up a Google campaign it took me more than 3 hours to place just 2 ads.
I hired a marketing expert to do it for me. All I had to do was approve the process as he worked. I tweaked a word or two, commented that I wanted coverage through the Lehigh Valley area (which I didn’t know I could specify in my last ads!), and generally just relaxed in my chair confident that the ads would be effective.
That was a big change too. Usually, I agonized over every word. I was stressed and hated the entire process. And for days I would question myself about whether I had done it correctly or if I had just wasted a half day of my life.
It took me much too long to begin to use experts. I had been in business for seven years before I seriously began to hire them. Until then, I bought into the myth that as a small business person it was cheaper and therefore better for me to just do it myself. (Does this sound familiar?)
There are many times when strategically it is actually smarter to hire an expert to do it for you.
- When you are really bad or really hate doing certain tasks
- When delegating frees you up for tasks that are strategically more important or just simply pay better
- When someone else can do it better or faster than you
- When you are lacking specific knowledge or skills that an expert has
There are many things in our businesses that we need to do ourselves. There just is no substitute for you. This fact makes it all the more important for you to identify those things that can and should be handled by someone else.
So, what did it cost me to pay an expert to create some Google ads for me? A better question is: What did I save by having someone do this for me? By paying the expert for only 30 minutes of his time, I saved 5 times that much of my time. As long as the expert’s hourly rate was not more than 5 times my rate (and it wasn’t) then I am happy to pay him to do marketing tasks like this for me.
As a result of hiring an expert, I had time to write and post a blog, work on a client project, and follow up on some networking leads.
What is your time worth? What can other people do better than you? What should you stop doing and happily pay someone else to do for you?
