While growing your small business you will inevitably encounter times when you must make a decision on whether to spend money or go the DIY route. These can be tough decisions because every business owner wants to be fiscally responsible, earn a profit and grow their business…all while looking just as professional, innovative and up to date as the larger corporations.
Here are some places you should consider using professional help or a combination solutions:
- Legal and Accounting. In the early stages of setting up your business, you can invest in getting the help you need while doing a significant part of the work yourself. Have an accountant set up your Quickbooks and have them show you how to enter in your invoices and transactions. Having this set up correctly will save you a ton of time down the line, especially when it’s time to do your taxes. Additionally, you will pay far less each month or quarter to have a review of your books rather than having someone do them for you. Once your business grows over 150 transactions per month, I would recommend budgeting in a bookkeeper to help you each month.
For the legal side of your business, most businesses that are single member LLC’s or sole proprietor can be set up by yourself. The SOS (Secretary of State) and the IRS forms needed are pretty easy to navigate through. However, setting up your Articles of Incorporation or a 501 organization is a bit more detailed and having a professional review it could help save you in the long run. Having an attorney or a legal aid review your contracts is a worthwhile investment as well.
Establishing a solid relationship with an attorney and an accountant are important. You want to always have someone you can trust and call in a pinch versus trying to look one up last minute if you come across a road block you need their help getting over.
- Human Capital. This starts with YOU. Continuing to learn and grow in your trade can seem like time and money you just don’t have, but it’s key for you to keep up to date with the changing times. Local and small businesses relay on the local community to depend on their expertise. With all the information out in cyberspace, you won’t want to be caught not knowing your industry inside and out.
Other places that human capital matter is when you need help in areas you aren’t an expert in, or you can’t keep up with both the back and front end of your business to allow you sufficient growth while maintaining your customer service expectations. This is where you can look for Freelancers, interns or part time workers. Each of these require different preparations from a tax perspective, so remember to ask that accountant and attorney you’re building a relationship with for advice.
The thing to remember when considering personnel is about the tradeoff. Time = Money. At some point your personal time will place a cap on your money, so when looking to grow, calculate your freed up time and how much more you can make by delegating tasks to another capable person.
- Advertising. Marketing takes research. A lot of research. This is one area you can combine but should consider getting some help. Your advertisement is often the first impression your potential clients have of you. If your website is incomplete or your content is sketchy, you can lose leads and clients before you’ve had a chance to show them what you can do for them. Additionally, SEO is becoming more and more complicated to be found and ranked highly by Google. Although SEO can be expensive, making sure your Web designer has some of the basic metrics on the back end of your site is invaluable.
You may also consider working with a company to create a seamless brand for your company so that your target audience can get to know the look and feel your organization brings. (We will run a blog about the difference between branding and marketing soon). This may include using a content writer. Writers are not always the cheapest route, but there is a guaranteed difference between your writing and that of an experienced writer who can help get your content up to par. This investment is worth is because you can often recycle the content throughout many of your advertising pieces.
There are free resources to help you with your marketing as well including business librarians who can help you with the research you need to craft a good marketing plan, online templates to help you schedule your social media and a ton of blogs to help with insight and keeping current on today’s latest trends. From these trends and research you can best determine where to invest more dollars and where you can save.
There are many other areas of your business you will need to examine and decide how best to spend your resources. Having a good network, mentor and business coach can help you when you get stuck trying to figure out your next step as well. I hope you find these tools helpful. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel as well for video tips and more.
~JMJ
