Many business owners want to be able to say that their business pulled itself up by its bootstraps. That it did pretty much everything by itself. But there are a lot of time-consuming and potentially expensive tasks that you might be better off outsourcing if you want your business to grow.
There are, of course, companies out there that are willing to take on pretty much any task your business could possibly have. But you need to be careful in this arena, because there are several tasks you’re better off doing yourself! Writing a business plan, picking a business name, reserving website domain names, interviewing and hiring employees – you can get others to do all of this for you, but these are tasks your business is really better off doing for itself.
So what tasks should you be willing to get help with? Well, if you’re a small business – and, let’s face it: as a startup, what other size business could you be? – then you should be looking into getting some assistance with the following tasks.
Marketing
This probably seems pretty obvious to a lot of you, but the fact is that an alarming number of startups attempt to save money by doing all of their marketing in-house. After all, no-one is making the claim that marketing is cheap. And it’s not exactly rocket science, right? There’s a reason successful companies have poured a lot of money into getting experts to help them with marketing: because great marketing drives sales, and in-house marketing is often the cause of great disappointment. Don’t fall into this trap!
Business law
Business law is a very complex thing, and you may not have realized just how complex and multifaceted it is until you tried to start a business! You need to pay attention not just to local business laws, but also state and federal business laws. There are regulations in several fields including the environment, and ignoring just one of them can cost you dearly in time. This is why many businesses choose to work with a law firm when it comes to such a complicated area.
Bookkeeping
Nothing gets more neglected in startups than bookkeeping. Perhaps it’s because the task is woefully underestimated. A lot of business owners become convinced they can do it themselves. Wrong. You need to be able to keep track of the financial happenings of your business as accurately as possible. This is a full-time job in itself in most businesses, which may lead you to believe that you need to hire a full-time bookkeeper. But you can actually outsource these tasks, even on a part-time basis.
Design
Don’t make the common mistake of thinking you can do all the art for your business. Just like marketing, the visual design of your website and other business aspects may seem like a simple enough task to perform in-house, but it really is best left to the experts who know what will make onlookers tick. The creation of everything from logos, letterheads, mascots, and even slideshow presentations can be outsourced to the right creative agency.