I’m a bit of a control freak! Which is a great attribute for a payroll lady to have. I need to know that I’ve got everything managed and that every detail is right. However eventually the time comes when you realise you’re guilty of insanity on some level.
And I had that realisation around 10 days ago.
I have always looked after my own website, and have always felt dissatisfied with it. It was never quite what I wanted to say to my customers, never quite putting across that I really love the idea of working with small and new employers, and whilst my function is to run payroll and supply employment contracts, my aim, and the reason I do what I do is to reduce people’s stress levels. To make their lives easier. To support them and their business and help them build and grow it into something that they’re proud of, and that I feel a very small part of too. Don’t get me wrong, I love running payroll but the reason I get out of bed and sit down at my computer every day isn’t purely to crunch the numbers. It’s about people and their dreams first and foremost.
So, having found myself in a position that needed to change for a number of reasons that I won’t bore you with, I realised the time had come to take the plunge and outsource the design of my website to someone who loves website design and build in the same way as I love my business. And a very odd train of thought started.
I offer an outsourcing service, I know that I know what I do inside and out. I expect my clients to trust me and hand their payroll over to me without any wobbles at all. But here I am, contemplating the outsourcing of my baby, my hopes and dream, and there’s a distinct unsettledness in my system. The choice of who would do the job for me wasn’t really a choice at all. I’ve worked with Jason before in a different capacity, and I have no reservations at all. But still, I’m nervous. I’m handing my website over to someone else and giving them free reign (within a scope) to do as they will.
There was over 24 hours of me sitting on my hands as we changed hosting company. The original hosting company I chose wasn’t really up to the job and we wanted better loading speeds for the new site. Bringing the historic email over onto the new server, and then waiting for ‘the internet’ to see that the site had been changed over onto another theme was a nerve-rackingly long day and a half.
But having agreed with myself that I would sit on my hands, fight my instincts, and trust Jason completely as I always have with the other work he did (and is still doing) for me, and not be a royal pain, things have gone swimmingly.
And what’s interesting is what I’ve learned from being on the other side of the fence. Outsourcing is scary. Asking someone to do something you that you don’t really understand and never will, having to place faith in them that they’ll do ‘the right thing’ for you each step of the way and paying them to do it goes against every instinct I had. But this has made me realise that whilst finding the right person to work with can be a difficult process, and then letting go of something that you’ve always been so in control of is worth it in the long run.
Ten days in, I am overjoyed with how the new PayrollAbility website is looking. There is no way that I could have had created what Jason has done. Having worked together in a different capacity for the last 7 months he knows me and what I want the business to offer to my clients, and has used that knowledge in the build and detailing of the site.
My stress levels are back to normal, I go onto the site with a big smile on my face knowing that the ongoing development will be as we discussed. I have no doubt that the attention to detail he gives to the other work he does for me shines through in the way he approaches the website design, and that I have mental space to think about what else I want to add to the site. And I can do this knowing that Jason will give me good advice, steer me in the right direction, and take my sometimes rather garbled and woolly ideas and make them work.
We’re about a week away from everything being finished, and I can only say that I should have done much sooner. Whilst I’ve had to be self-disciplined and do all I can to ensure I haven’t annoyed the hell out of Jason whilst he does what he does (fingers crossed at least), I can only say it’s worth finding the resolve.
And I have loved getting a perspective on how my clients feel. It’ll be an experience I’ll remember and use in every interaction with a prospective client, which can only make my desire to help and support new businesses even stronger than before.
And I’d like to make sure Jason gets the recognition he deserves too. Jason the SEO Guru and Wizard, and Website Developer Extraordinaire can be found loving tending his clients at Rise Online.
