There’s no question that part of the fun of building a startup is that you get to wear a lot of hats. That’s part of the excitement of your work every single day.
There’s a cost to wearing so many hats, though. A lot of daily decisions and tasks rest only on your shoulders. You’re probably creating a bottleneck in your company because you’re bootstrapping and keeping costs low.
You’re costing your company much more than you realize because you’re pinching pennies. There is a balance between the two, which is to invest in small business IT outsourcing and other tasks.
That’s enough to get things off of your plate and improve productivity. Read on to learn which tasks you need to prioritize and increase your productivity.
1. Information Technology
Your startup relies on technology and IT to function, no matter what industry you’re in. Startups have a couple of choices to build a secure infrastructure. You can invest in the infrastructure and keep it in-house.
That means having to invest in servers, network IT, and have the office space to house those servers. You also have to have someone to maintain those servers and the network. Hiring an IT employee isn’t cheap, either.
Instead of eating up your capital on tech expenses, outsource IT to a company that’s set up to do it. They already have the infrastructure and staff set up, you sign up for a plan and have a fixed expense. That’s sure to be way lower than what you would need to spend to keep it in-house.
2. Human Resources
How much do you know about hiring and firing people? How much do you know about labor laws? Chances are, not a whole lot. The less you know about such things, the more risk you’re putting on your business.
Outsourcing human resources is a smart move because they’re experts who understand labor laws and payroll laws. You’ll make sure that your employees are hired and work within the law and they get paid on time.
3. Accounting and Bookkeeping
There are startup founders that are great a marketing and sales, but horrible with financials. If you’re one of them, then you’ll want to separate yourself from the company’s finances and hand that off to someone else.
There are differences between accountants and bookkeepers. There are some firms or people that do both for companies. There are others that will do one or the other.
A bookkeeper manages your books and cash flow during the year. They enter transactions, manage receipts, and sometimes will do invoicing and collections.
Accountants analyze the transactions, provide reports, and make sure that you’re limiting your tax liabilities legally.
Both functions are critical functions in managing your business. These are the top tasks that you should consider outsourcing.
4. Contracts and Legal Issues
Are you an attorney? Unless you are, you’ll want to think about outsourcing your legal work to an attorney.
You may not think that’s necessary since you can easily print contract templates off of the internet. By doing that and having no legal expertise to read between the lines, you could be setting up your business for major legal issues down the road.
What if you have intellectual property that you want to protect? Do you want to file the application yourself? Another common issue is the violation of a photographer’s copyright by pulling an image off if the internet.
In other words, you don’t have the expertise to manage the legal issues in your business. You could wind up costing your business thousands of dollars because you wanted to save a few bucks.
5. Marketing
A typical cycle for business owners goes like this: start the business by marketing very heavily. Clients come in. You’re busy serving those clients, so you stop marketing. Clients dry up.
The cycle repeats itself until you’re emotionally and physically burned out. You can break that cycle by offloading marketing tasks and strategy. That ensures that your marketing is consistent and you can focus on building your business.
There are dozens of ways to outsource your marketing. You should first figure out what the most important and effective marketing tasks are.
Your business may rely on search traffic for new business. In that instance, it makes the most sense to hire a SEO consultant who can help you maximize your search traffic.
You may want to hire someone to occasionally hire someone to write content for your website, or you can hire a consultant that can do both.
6. Graphic Design
You may be tempted to create a logo or design brochures yourself. That may not be a good idea, especially if you don’t know what good design is.
Businesses make the mistake of having brochures and direct mail pieces that have too much text and are unappealing. In the end, they create a negative brand impression instead of getting a graphic designer to handle the tasks.
You need to design presentations, pitch-decks, a logo, social media posts, and so much more. All of these pieces need to be consistent with your brand. A great graphic designer will understand that.
7. Basic Administrative Tasks
How much time do you spend managing your calendar and answering basic emails? Where would you spend your time if you didn’t have to answer the phone all of the time?
That’s what outsourcing some of these tasks can do for you. You’ll have the brainpower to focus on big picture items that move the business forward.
There are plenty of people who work as virtual assistants who can help you manage the smaller tasks so you can work on other projects in the business.
There’s More Than Small Business IT Outsourcing
Once you realize that your time is being sucked up by projects and tasks you can outsource, you may decide to outsource everything on this list.
You’ll definitely want to consider small business IT outsourcing because that is the foundation of your business. Without a functional network, you simply can’t work.
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