The Starting Steps to Outsourcing for Consultants

When you first start out as a solo consultant, you wear all the hats: marketing, admin, bookkeeping, operations — and somewhere in there, actually delivering your service. But as your client base grows, something’s got to give.

Most consultants begin outsourcing with their bookkeeping or accounting. It’s low-risk, essential, and frankly—something you don’t want to get wrong. From there, the journey tends to follow a natural “circle of life” in business support.

You might then look to bring in help with marketing, perhaps hiring a freelancer or agency to help get your name out there and generate more leads. As leads turn into clients, the business starts to expand — and you’ll reach a decision point:

1. You need to hire associate consultants to take on more delivery work.

2. You’re happy doing the delivery yourself, but need admin support to free up your time.

3. You're ready to scale your business, which means building a team of associate consultants and freelancers to manage different areas of the business.

   
   

Whichever route you’re heading towards, it starts with one thing: getting clear on where your time is going.

Track Your Time First

Before you outsource, track your time for at least one to two weeks. Use tools like Toggl or Clockify to get a visual breakdown of how your time is spent. Set up project categories like:

• Admin

• Marketing

• Finance

• Delivery (Client Work)

• Business Development

This will help you see exactly how much of your day is spent on non-billable or low-impact tasks — the things that are keeping you busy, but not necessarily helping you grow.

I cover exactly how to track your time, view reports, and see how much time (and money) you’re spending on non-billable tasks in my post here.

“Focus on the £100 tasks and delegate the £10 ones.”

Once you see how much time is going to admin or repetitive work, you’ll be in a better position to decide what to delegate — and to whom.

Not Ready to Outsource Yet? Set Up Your Systems Anyway

If you’re not quite ready to hire a VA or freelancer, that’s totally fine — but start working like you will be. That means:

• Documenting how you do things (e.g. how you onboard a client or send invoices)

• Creating folders for templates, brand assets, and key client info

• Using software to create repeatable workflows

Here are a few of my favourite free tools I recommend to consultants:

• ClickUp or Trello – for project management

• Canva – for simple, professional marketing graphics

• Google Workspace – for file sharing, emails, and calendar management

• Clockify or Toggl – for time tracking (essential for understanding where your time goes)

• Loom – for recording walkthroughs of processes and instructions

These tools are all free to start with, and perfect for getting into the habit of working with systems. Not only will they make your day-to-day easier now, but when you’re ready to bring someone on board, you’ll already have a setup in place.

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re aiming to free up your evenings, grow your business, or simply take a proper day off, outsourcing is the next natural step. But it only works when you’re clear on what to outsource, and have systems in place to support someone else stepping in.

If you’d like help working out where to start or want to prep your business for outsourcing in the next few months, feel free to get in touch — this is exactly what we help our consultants with.