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When you first go into business for yourself, it’s usually just you keeping all the plates spinning. On any given day you’re an accountant, salesperson, and IT support. And that’s on top of the o
As you begin to grow and scale, it’s impossible to do everything yourself. After all, you need to concentrate on your core business functions. The services and products you provide that pay with the bills. It can also give you a better work-life balance, as you’re not spending every waking hour taking care of things to keep the business running.
Here are some of the functions you should consider outsourcing.
Admin and customer service
Virtual assistants are a godsend. They can take over your day-to-day admin, calendar management and deal with customer inquiries. VAs work remotely so you can choose one that works anywhere, and scale your hours up or down as you need to. Some VAs specialize in particular areas such as diary management, admin, bookkeeping, etc, but many are all-rounders.
Financial Accounting
When you’re freelancing, you might have dealt with your bookkeeping and accounting yourself. But the bigger your business gets, you’re going to need a professional bookkeeper or a firm such as Bryden Johnson to handle your accounts. They’ll be able to take over the paperwork, filing and advise you on how to structure your business to be more tax efficient.
Many companies can also take care of your payroll services if you have employees or freelancers that need to be paid in line with tax rules.
HR
So business is good, and you need to hire employees to expand. There’s a lot of legal and administrative red tape to navigate. Having access to an HR specialist could save you a lot of time and money and ensure that you have the best chance of hiring the right people. Unless you’re planning to take on a lot of employees, you probably don’t need an in-house HR resource. There are many HR companies that specialize in providing these services to small businesses.
Marketing
Marketing covers a wide range of activities, from writing and running your website, to running your social media. It’s not something that you can do yourself at the level and quality you need to do it at and still have time to actually do your core work. You might want to work with a freelancer or an agency that specializes in working with small businesses in your sector.
Legal
Most people don’t think about legal advice until they’re in trouble. The truth is, using legal support at an early stage is a good idea and can ensure that your company structure is set up correctly and all of your contracts and terms are set up properly. Of course, should you run into any legal trouble down the line, then you already have someone who knows you and your business.
Takeaways
Building a business means that you need to choose which functions need to be handled by specialists and taken off your place. It’s the perfect way to scale and thrive.
