Hire or Outsource? How to Make the Right Call for Your Business

As your business grows, you’ll hit a crucial crossroads: you can’t do it all alone, but what’s the best way to get help?

In this episode, we tackle a question every founder will face: should you hire an employee or outsource the task?

We walk you through how to evaluate each option’s timing, cost, and complexity, so you can scale with intention, not stress.

You’ll learn:

• How to know when it’s time to get support (even before you feel “ready”)
• Why not outsourcing can actually cost you more
• When to outsource vs. when to hire internally
• The differences in speed, control, cost, and commitment
• What to consider based on your business model, cash flow, and goals
• Why the “right” decision depends on your version of growth

This conversation is packed with real-life examples, simple frameworks, and practical insights to help you move forward confidently, whether it’s your first hire or your fifth.

Want to build your business faster and with less overwhelm? Apply to work with us here.

“You don’t need to feel ‘ready’. You need to be strategic. Hire six months ahead of where you’re going.” — Anna Angelova

Transcript for “Should You Hire or Outsource Your Next Task?”

The transcript below was automatically generated. Please ignore any errors or inconsistencies in the text.

Anna Angelova   0:05
Happy Friday. This is the latest episode of More Than Just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a thriving business with me, Anna Angelova, business coach and consultant, and my fellow co-host, Joris Minosvant, a business consultant. Hey, Joris.
Hey Jaris, happy Friday. It’s August 1st.

Jores Minasvand   0:28
Hey Anna, happy Friday, August 1st indeed.
Beautiful, beautiful week, beautiful day. So let’s jump right in. And what is our beautiful subject today?

Anna Angelova   0:43
The subject today has everything to do with hiring or outsourcing. It’s ultimately like when you are starting your business especially like I I I guess there are a couple of things that we’ll probably discuss today. One is like when do you know it’s time to?
Get help. You get the first task delegated to someone and then of course like the the thing is also do you do you?
Hire or do you outsource? It could. What do you do? Like what do you do? So I’m thinking actually starting with the first thing that as you are starting your business and then it actually applied when as you’re growing your business actually to to think about OK.
Is it time for my next task to outsource or or hire for my next task? So if you’re just starting, it’s your first task. If you already have established things, it might be your next task if you already have a-team or you’re outsourcing.
And ultimately when it comes to like, when is the time to do this? And there are a few components here, like a few things that play play a role. And one thing is where are you right now, right? Like it’s your current situation.
And first and foremost, financially, can you, can you sustain this? Like, do you actually have enough funds in your business to either hire or outsource?
And of course how much work you have right now. So the first thing to look at is of course what’s going on right now. But then the other key thing is actually looking into the future, looking into and the future is not like 10 years into the future, it’s more towards the next six months and one of the.
Things is that ideally you’d want to hire with the next six months in mind. Like you want to hire six months ahead of time because when you think about it, it takes time for people to get used to things, to get up to speed.
So when do you know it’s time to hire or outsource your first task? Well, your business is doing good enough that you have the revenue and from the revenue you actually have enough resources to either.
Hire someone or outsource and um.
Of course, as a business owner, in the beginning you’re doing everything, and probably even if you could work 24 hours a day, it wouldn’t be enough. So again, especially as your business is growing, you have so many things going on.
And you probably want to hire even right now and if if financially like when you look at your financial situation right now for the business and the forecast you have ahead for the next half a year or so, go ahead even if you feel like you’re not ready like if you have enough funds to to.
Support someone or outsource a little bit, even if it’s just a little bit of the work, go ahead and do this. So this is what I would say for when you know it’s time to outsource or hire Joris on this first part of the conversation.
Thoughts.

Jores Minasvand   4:08
Um.
For me, I’m from a corporate world, so for me it’s more of a the distinction is operations versus project.

Anna Angelova   4:21
Oh, so you’re going into the hire or outsource? OK, awesome, awesome. Let’s go to the second part of the conversation. So you know that you have enough money, you know you can hire or outsource. So now the question is, do you hire or do you outsource? Like what? What do you choose?

Jores Minasvand   4:24
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean if if you want to go back to what you were talking about, there are when you talk about money cost of something, if you are the the owner and you work 20 hours a day in building the product or providing the service.
And you’re not a web designer. Do you really want? Do you think #1 you would do a good job designing your web website? #2 do you think? How much do you think it will? How much longer do you think it will take you? So as an owner, you think I want to spend 20 hours a day on.
Providing my service or I want to spend the next four to six weeks on building my website, whereas I can give the outsource that to a web designer and that web designer will do it in a week. Much better product, much better features because I’m not a web designer expert, so.
When we talk about money, it’s also where do you want to spend your time and money, right? Really. Like if you really need a website, don’t do it yourself. I would never do it myself as a hobby, maybe, but not as part of my business. I want my business to be.
I want to focus on my business in delivering the the service. So that’s the perspective from the first part of the the conversation. So don’t wait until you have so much money to outsource things. Think about the cost, the real cost of the of the not outsourcing.
Go ahead.

Anna Angelova   6:09
Yeah, the real cost of not outsourcing is a great point because like if you could free up like 3 hours a day where instead of doing something that is not bringing revenue, you actually have more sales and you bring more revenue, isn’t it worth it pay someone to do that work 3 hours at outsource or or higher? Absolutely.
So yes, and that’s why some of the recommendations are actually to to hire or outsource before you think you’re ready because it’s an, it’s an investment and of course like you don’t want to be reckless and that’s why I mentioned that looking at your finance, it’s like you don’t want to be reckless.
You want to make a a move that aligns with your business where it is, where it’s going. And if you are on the fence, go for it, go for it. And as long as you focus on the sales and the other person like said Joris, you get someone to do your website while.
You’re actually selling awesome.

Jores Minasvand   7:13
Absolutely. Three hours of your time spent on sales. If you can sell $5000 worth of business versus 3 hours of your time spent on your website, which you could equal $25.00 an hour, you could have paid for someone $75.
And then the value you get out of it is not much. That’s that’s very simple math. That’s how I usually put the put the dollars and cents into outsourcing. I’m running a business from my house and I’m working 20 hours a day and my house needs cleaning.
Take me 4 hours on a Saturday to clean the entire house.
4 hours of my time is about $4000, maybe more, but $10,000. If I can sell things and I can move my company towards 4 hours, I can pay for pay $200 for someone to clean my house.
Very simple. So remember in the case of our the the lawyer we were chatting with her, she her commute is 2 hours each way. She spends 4 hours driving where in those four hours she if she’s in the backseat actually working, she can make about $5000 and she pays a driver 80 $100.
An hour to drive her.
It makes, I mean, it’s not even a contest. It’s not even a question. It’s a it’s already proven. It’s like the math speaks the the the volumes. Like it makes sense for you to do it. But again, don’t be eglistic. Make sure when you sit in that back seat and the drivers, you’re paying a driver 100 bucks an hour, you’re actually making that $4000.
To pay that driver. So if you’re truly your time is that valuable that you’re selling and making money, absolutely, absolutely. It makes perfect sense. And for the second part of it is.
Let’s say you already have the money, your project, your company is running. Now you’re building a team and you’re saying, OK, there are 10 things in my in in my daily cycle that happen. Do I outsource or do I hire?
And you want to start on this one or you want me to start?

Anna Angelova   9:30
You can go ahead. Yeah, you can go ahead. OK.

Jores Minasvand   9:33
So again, I’m from the corporate world. To me that it’s a very clear distinction and it applies to any business if it’s something that it’s a one month project and it stops and ends and it gives you something that you need in your business.
But it’s not part of the core of your what you do and what your team does. That’s 100% the project outsourcing.
If it’s something that that’s like we talked about making a website or building, I don’t know, something an extra doc in your in your back of the the the warehouse or whatever. But if it’s something that’s repeated and it’s operational.
For example, your accounts payable, your accounts receivable, your finances, your customer service that you hire for. And I think this is something that you can talk about more, Anna. The other part of it is.
If it is, it has to do with your intellectual property and the actual value is something that has to do with the core of your business. You keep that inside.

Anna Angelova   10:37
Yes, absolutely. So the other thing is the other distinction between hiring and outsourcing, of course, is is this your core business? Like if it’s your core business, you’d want to hire. And hiring doesn’t mean that it’s full-time, like you can hire someone part-time.
And then if it’s not core business, you can decide to outsource that it’s OK to outsource. And then another another aspect of like when you think about hiring versus outsourcing, of course it’s how quickly you need things. So if you need something faster.
Then outsourcing it might be the the better approach because when you outsource usually it’s it’s a faster process like you can especially for a small business like you can find someone on Fiver or or Upwork to to do the work for you quickly.
Whereas with hiring and and we faced this like we tried to hire and oh boy was it a roller coaster and and ultimately we ended up not hiring anyone and we post this so.
Higher and and this is something that we’ve I’ve been hearing from so many other business owners how hard it is to find people and so again how quickly you need something is another another aspect to to think about and then also the other thing is how much control you want to have.
Because when it comes to when you hire someone, you are ultimately in control of the culture, the way things are delivered and all these kind of things. But when you outsource, yes, like when you outsource, you still provide like you’re still the one who pays, right?
Like you are the one who pays for this project for this thing to be done, but you have less control and especially like when you’re starting your business, it probably doesn’t matter because like you’d most likely outsource things to just individuals you find on.
Some of those websites I mentioned, but like when you are a bigger like when as your business grows and you might outsource to another company doing something you don’t have, as you mentioned customer service, like one thing is sometimes customer service is outsourced.
And you don’t have control over their culture if you don’t have control over a lot of things. Yes, as as the client you get certain things like you you get to to have a say in about certain things, but you don’t have control over everything. So this is the other aspect like control, like how much control do.
You want or need to have, even if it’s not part of your core business. Maybe this is something that you really want to keep aligned with your culture, aligned with your mission, vision, values, goals. So these are a few aspects to think about when it comes to hiring, outsourcing and outsourcing and now.
Of course the other thing is like when you’re hiring, you get into completely different world now, especially when this is your first hire. So you open the door for, I know Joris, you mentioned OpEx versus.
CapEx, yeah, opens versus CapEx you mentioned. So when it comes to hiring, it changes things within your accounting, how, how, how things are done within your accounting and then.
Usually when you hire. So in addition to salary, a lot of companies provide benefits, insurance, unemployment things, training.

Jores Minasvand   14:24
I mean, I mean.
Desk, laptop, software, license, insurance, software insurance, antivirus, privacy, data privacy, a whole bunch of new things. Like I said, something when you hire people, it’s for long term. It’s something that is core of your.
Business and on average in North America hiring a person today in 2025 costs about 100 to $120,000. It’s just to from advertisement to interview to hire on board and get them going and the moment they hit the hit your your.
Floor you’re paying them. There’s a at least I would say. I want to say four to six weeks, but in some cases it’s more like 6 months of learning curve where this person needs to learn everything, even if they’re good. Hope you’re hoping they’re good. You made the right choice.
And they’re productive. So you have to constantly monitor and then you if you hire so many people, then you have to hire a manager to manage them. It just balloons into this, this big thing that that a lot of people may not want to manage, whereas when you bring a contractor or you outsource things.
First of all, it’s you buy the knowledge that your team doesn’t have. There is 0 learning curve, maybe one or two days for them to learn how to how your stuff runs and then they they are fully productive or you don’t pay them.
Very simple. You can’t do that with a with a full-timer. The moment project ends or if you don’t like their work within 10 days or two weeks or whatever the notice in your contract is, you terminate. You hire someone now in North America, even or Europe, anywhere in the world, you hire someone. It will take you two years to get.
Get rid of them with All the new laws that they have protection, this and protection that. So you need to be very, very sure of. I mean there have been debates. Some people say the ratio of 65 to 35 is good, maybe in the mid 2000.
Between 2005 and 2010, that was a good ratio, 65% contractor, 35%, which is outsourcing 35% full time. Then I think after 2010, I think the government’s also pushed companies to start hiring and.
But I think that also is going back now. It’s more of a it makes more sense to outsource and hire contractors than it does full timers. It’s very much easier for them for to deal with them. But again, you need to look at your business, what your what your goals are.

Anna Angelova   17:16
Yeah, of course. It really depends on your business and sometimes hiring is the right answer. Let’s say you open your own bakery and you’re selling your your cupcakes and things like this, and in the beginning you do everything, including a key all day long you you are.
At the in the bakery or selling things, but then at some point you probably want to hire someone to be there and sell like someone, a cashier and a salesperson. So it really depends. It really depends on the type of business you have and there are pros and cons for both.
There are pros and cons for for both and that’s why we are sharing the good and the bad, the both sides. What’s to consider, how to consider these things and as with any decision though, don’t over.
Over analyze it and endlessly think about oh but if I outsource this is it. But then if I hire do I go this way? Do I go that way? While for some things you might be really clear that oh OK, this is outsourced and I’m outsourcing. This is a one month project and I don’t need a website developer.
Get my website up and running and that’s it. For other things that you might need some time to consider, just make the decision, try it and test it. And business owners will always try and test things and we always learn and nothing is set in stone. Yes, of course, Joris, like you said.
Hearing someone costs like over 100,000 and making mistakes there, it’s costly. But ultimately sometimes we learn through experience and we need to experience something before we’re able to get better at this, so.
Whichever way you lean, go ahead and there’s no right or wrong answer. These are two different paths, two different ways things work, and ultimately it’s your business, it’s your decision, and we hope that what we shared here was helpful.
So you can at least see, OK, this it looks like hiring is the path for me or Oh no, you know the outsourcing sounds like the better thing. So hopefully this was really like provide at least a little bit of insight into why or when you should go one route versus the other.

Jores Minasvand   19:48
Balance, right? It’s All about the balance. You need to find the right balance for you.
Some people like to keep things small and profitable. Don’t over bloat your systems, your your Company for no reason and hire people who are 1020% productive. You get a contractor who does 3 full timers job.
And at the end of the day, everyone is happier. So find the right balance, what works for you. And there’s some people who say, oh, I don’t, I don’t trust contractors, whatever, like you need to find your right balance for you, for your business.

Anna Angelova   20:26
And if you have any questions, like we say, share them in the comments, especially if you’re again, I know that YouTube has comments. Not sure if the Apple Podcast has comments, but.
Share in the comments reach out to you if you want to to us if you want more help with with this like we’re always here to share and if you even want to go on a call and talk about some of these things we will have to.
And get to learn more about your business and how we can help you. And yeah, otherwise this is it for this week. I know it’s been a bit of a longer conversation for Friday, but it’s an interesting topic and.
Tomorrow we are recapping the week, so if you missed any of the episodes, you can listen to the episode tomorrow so you can see what we talked about the past couple of days. No, not couple five days and if anything was a topic that you were interested in. So remember to tune in tomorrow for a quick recap and.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, subscribe and yeah, we’ll be back tomorrow.

Jores Minasvand   21:41
Yep. Thanks, Anna. Bye.