The idea of outsourcing vs inhouse is something that I’ve been thinking about alot over the last month or so.
As a business owner especially at a small scale there is thousands of things you can be doing at a time. Whether that’s distributing leaflets, doing your accounts, or working on social media you can certainly keep busy. And that’s even before you start factoring in clients work and answering enquiries and emails.
There is then one off projects that take up a lot of time. From starting a new website to redecorating your office. The former was something we have just completed, which took us around three months from the start to launch.
During the process of building the website I frequently asked the question to myself: shall we just pay someone to for this for us?
It’s a tough one. When you run or own a business you need to know how to do everything. You’re a single handed marketing, accounts, sales and complaints department. As well as needing to do everything, you genuinely want to do it! My business is like my baby, I want nothing but the best for it. But there is only 24 hours in the day. After 8 hours of sleep (more like 5 or 6) you’ve only got between 16-19 hours in the day to get everything done.
So what can you do. Pay people to do some things for you! For example, spend way too much time on social media? Why not employ an agency to do it for you. But then again, that’s money that’s taken away from the actual marketing campaigns, or taken away from your working capital you need to buy stock.
It’s a frustrating conundrum to find yourself in. I was like this with our new website. Both Phil and I have so much to be working on, that we contemplated outsourcing the website to a professional who can do it for us. But this would cost in the many hundred if not thousands of pounds. So we did it ourselves using an awesome piece of software that made it a hell of a lot easier. We got it done and (if I may say so) it looks bloody amazing. But I don’t doubt there will be projects or tasks we outsource. I have a feeling our accounts may be one of them.
It may well be that by working with someone else we can offer a much better service to a client. Whether that’s a particular niche or style of design, video or photography that we can’t personally provide. We already outsource our print offerings. As we have some kick ass printing partners that are the experts in their field. So collaboration can create some wonderful things.
I think it all comes down to knowing your strengths. There’s no shame in outsourcing a task that someone else can do better! This will help you grow your business in the strongest way, and give you the time to focus on what you are great at.