Outsourcing core tasks early will cost you more time than doing the tasks yourself.

When I started my bootstrapped business I wanted to act like a CEO right away. I hired a freelance agency to handle all customer support emails so I could focus on product strategy.

I thought I was buying back my time to work on high-value tasks. Instead I spent three hours every day correcting the agencys mistakes and apologizing to users.

When outsourcing a process before you fully understand it yourself outsourcing cannot train someone to do it right. The freelancers had no operating procedures because I had not built any yet.

I fired the agency. Took back the support inbox for the next three months. I wrote down the answer, to every common question and created a detailed manual.

When I finally hired a part-time assistant the assistant handled ninety percent of tickets perfectly in the first week. You have to get your hands dirty and build the system before you can hand it off.

Doing the grunt work yourself is a phase to understand your own business mechanics. What is a task you tried to outsource but ended up having to take ?