Doing everything in your business yourself can save you money in the beginning. And when you first start out in business it can be a necessity. But as you grow your business the effort it takes to DIY can end up costing more than just the cash you save.

Bringing on extra staff who know what they are doing can be the fastest way to grow your business - or at least not screw it up.

But as anyone who's ever tried to stop DIYing their business can tell you, it isn't easy.

Sometimes you just need someone to point out the hidden costs that come with DIYing and help you to let go of those tasks you have been doing on your own for so long.

Here are three ways that DIYing your coaching business is costing you that you didn't expect.

It takes you outside your area of expertise.

In the early days of your business, it made sense to bootstrap everything and save money where you could.

You are smart and can pick things up quickly. But now that your business is growing do you really need to spend hours trying to figure out how to fix that widget? And why does that page suddenly have a purple background after changing your theme? And what are child themes anyway, are they important?

A real website developer (or a great tech VA) would know how to fix these things for you quickly, and as a bonus, they could also back up your website, update the security plugins and upload the new pages in the first place.

And this is true for a number of areas of your business.

If you have been:

• struggling with your own bookkeeping...
• creating your own social media graphics...
• uploading and formatting your own blog content...
• answering your own customer service emails...

Is that the best use of your time?

Bringing in someone who already has the tools and experience to do the task in the right way the first time, means you aren’t wasting time you could be spending with clients.

So if you don’t know how to do the task, and it doesn’t need you specifically to do the work (like your actual coaching) then outsource it to a specialist who knows what they are doing.

Download our Ultimate Guide to Delegating Here for More Tips & Tools on How to Delegate as a Solopreneur

You lose time that you could be seeing clients.

In the early days of your business, you had a few clients and plenty of time in between to do all the mundane tasks that make a business successful. Some of these tasks you are probably good at and you even like doing. But while you are doing these tasks you aren’t bringing money into the business.

If you have ever:

• copied and pasted information from one spreadsheet into another...
• updated your own website and formatted the pages…
• loaded content for your social media into a scheduler….
• onboarded a client’s information and set them up in your systems

Is this the best use of your time? (You might be sensing a theme here)

By paying someone else to do it for you, you have more time for paying clients.

Competent VA’s and service providers do the work in half the time and often do it better, as they have the advantage of experience in a range of businesses and with a variety of solutions.

Remember your hourly rate.

If you take an hour to do something - like create your social media graphics in Canva -  then you are missing out on the $150 (or whatever your rate is) that you could have charged a paying client.

I’m guessing that your VA isn’t charging you $150.

The costs you don’t even know exist.

When you started your business you fixed problems as they arose with one band-aid solution after another. Like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. But when you are growing and you are busy with clients you can’t afford to have a major problem derail you, like a crashed website or a tax audit.

And when you DIY you are willing to accept all sorts of help, but you may not know that the homemade logo that cousin Frank’s new girlfriend made in her art class is making your high-end prospects think twice about hiring you.

You have enough headaches without having to fix things you don’t even know are broken. 

Bringing in an expert to work with your business can help you understand where the problems are before they even happen.If you have...

• been tinkering with your website for years and have been playing with the code based on blog article suggestions…
• been guessing what documentation you need for your taxes...

• ever tinkered with your website and discovered it was now just a white screen with some text in the corner…
• done your own branding and design. (or had a friend help you out)...

If your website or branding don’t communicate the look you need to a prospective client then you could be losing clients and you wouldn’t know it.

Final thoughts

As David Packard from Hewlett-Packard said, “You can never grow your company faster than you can find the right people to work in your company.”

So if you are looking to grow your business it is time to stop DIYing and start delegating. Look for activities that are costing you time, taking you outside your area of expertise, or have the potential to be expensive mistakes.

If you don’t know how to do something in your business, have someone else do it for you. If you like doing something but you can earn more from doing your specialty than it would cost to have someone else do that task for you, then outsource it.

And best of all, if you just don’t like doing something, then you can delegate that too.