As a sole proprietor, you have to wear many hats. But, typically a person who opens up a bricks-and-mortar business knows that they can’t physically do everything, so they hire people. They hire a cashier, perhaps a cook, a waitress; you know, the normal positions that they need to do the job so they can do their job, manage.
However, when people start up a home businesses, they often think they are supposed to do everything themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to earn a CEO-level income, you need to think like a CEO. That means hiring the best and the brightest, to do certain parts of the work, while you look after other parts of the business.
Not to worry, though, you do not need to hire employees. Instead, you can use contractors, or put another way, outsource some of the tasks you need help with. These are people who you pay an agreed upon fee, but you don’t have to worry about self-employment taxes, or anything like that, if you do it correctly. The bottom line is that if you want to increase your revenues, and have more freedom in your online business, you need to build a team of contractors.
1. It is Inexpensive – When compared to hiring an employee, outsourcing to a contractor is a lot less expensive. Usually, you can pay a flat fee, so that there are no surprises at billing time. But mostly, people who know what they are doing, can do it faster than you. No need to be a Jack-of-all-trades.
2. You Can Find More Talent – When you are not impeded by time or location, you can find the best and brightest to work with you, without any concern about where they live, or how they will get to work. The internet enables you to find the right people for any task, without being concerned about location.
3. Contractors are Experts – When you work with a contractor, they are the expert in their field. For example, if you hire someone to handle all your social media marketing, you simply agree on what should be done, and then you let it go, and let the experts do their thing.
4. You Free Up Your Time – You have a particular expertise that should be used doing that thing you are an expert in. For example, if you are an artist who wants to sell your work online, you need to create a lot of work to make it profitable. If you are busy marketing, bookkeeping, organizing your “store”, and doing all the technology that comes with it, you will not have as much productive time.
5. Gain Talent You Do not Have – A company can also outsource when they simply need talent they don’t have. For example, if you’re a marketing company and like to do the physical work of posting on social media for your clients, and one of your clients wants you to edit a video, but it is really not your thing, you can choose to outsource it instead of turning down the work.
6. You Can Double (or Quadruple) Yourself – Being very talented at something, and that is your main source of income, and it requires one-on-one time, you will max out at a certain number of clients. But, if you can hire others who are also experts in the same field, you can double yourself and your business, through outsourcing.
7. Realize that You Cannot Do Everything – You don’t need to do everything in your business. You do not have to be the cook, and the waitress, and the bookkeeper. Plus, it usually does not work out very well, because you are not going to be efficient in everything.
8. Maximize Your Efficiencies – Whatever it is that you are good at, and you like doing it, that is what you should work on. The fact is, the people who build six-plus figure businesses do not do everything themselves, because they know that they want to maximize their efforts and they want to be efficient.
To get started building your team of contractors, write down all the tasks you have to do during the day, week, quarter, and year. Then eliminate from your daily workload anything that is not within your expertise, by hiring contractors to do those tasks.
If you have to read a manual, and learn to do it, let it go to someone who really knows what they are doing. Before you know it, it will pay off, and you will build a bigger, better, stronger, and more profitable business.
