Don’t forget to include outsourcing as an important part of your business plan.
Earn money early by developing a means to get more work done than you can do alone. People do not open businesses to work eighteen (18) hours a day; give up the benefits they had while working; or to earn less money than they did at a job. However, if you don’t plan how you’ll make money, it’s easy to get stuck in a situation where you might be working alone and nearly kill yourself trying to make something happen.
Even if you’re an accountant, you shouldn’t expect to return to your home or office to do your own bookkeeping, financial statement analysis, market research, and other administrative tasks that all businesses must perform. A great first step is to understand that you can’t make a lot of money on your own. Once you understand that philosophy, you need to plan what you’re willing to do and what makes the most sense to hire a professional to do it for you.
These facts should become critical parts of your business plan. Because as soon as possible, ideally before you open for business, you should have an idea of what your work day will look like. Make no mistake, no matter how well you plan, you’re in for surprises. In many cases, tackling those surprises can add additional tasks to your day that you hadn’t planned for. And this could cause you to have to work more than you had planned just to earn a living.
Regardless of the type of profession you choose to build a business in, it will require more than just practicing your profession to make the business work.
It goes without saying that you will need to practice the profession around which you started your business. But in addition, all companies have administrative tasks that must be carried out, such as accounting, strategy development, website maintenance, tax planning and compliance. None of these things earn you a penny, but they must be done in order for your business to run efficiently, or at all. And that is just the beginning. You need to market to get new customers, and you need to take steps to stay in constant contact with existing customers. Neither of these actions pay you anything and in situations where small amounts of money can be made on promotions, they never pay what you could have earned in hourly rates for doing the work you set up the business to do. When you open any type of service business, a good way to start may be to use subcontractors.
Along with all the other tips we’ve tried to offer, using subcontractors may just be the sign you’ve been looking for. However, using it will change any ideas you may have had about going out of your way to try and earn your small fortune on your own. It may require you to spend more time selling your service and less time buried under a pile of work you’ve been able to get your hands on. If you have professional credentials, you may have convinced yourself that you don’t need help. But, without it, you create a ceiling on your earning capacity. Many people believe that they can overcome this problem by spending large sums of money to get started. I absolutely disagree with that approach.
You should be able to start your business for a few hundred dollars or no more than a few thousand. When you work alone, you may find yourself investing money in your business just to keep it open. This is a situation where you have to put your ego aside. Your goal should be more than just making your business self-sufficient. Your goal should be to earn enough to make attractive profits, with a strategy to increase profits frequently.
Outsourcing can offer you that possibility. Few people would question the reality that getting your first clients is hard. If you’re marketing correctly, you’ll find that some of the business you couldn’t accept is because they were out of your area. Some jobs may require more labor than you could provide alone. In other cases, you may have to turn down a job simply because you can’t handle any more work on your own. And this is where outsourcing can make all the difference for you.
Outsourcing will help your business do what you set it up to do
Many business owners believe that the only way to grow or expand is to hire employees or open another location. Either of these options would require additional expenses. The last thing you need is to incur additional expenses for a new business. Or, to drastically increase the expenses of an existing business, especially if it means paying less. An even worse option would be to try to participate in any of these options before your company is profitable. In situations where you work alone, the business model requires the business owner to do everything. Since you can’t be in two places simultaneously, your management or fee-generating work must suffer. This can take working many hours to get everything done. Or, creating a profit ceiling, or even worse, borrowing to jump-start your business and keep it moving.
Outsourcing will help your business do what you set it up to do. To produce substantial earnings and give you more free time than you would have at a 40 hour a week job. And remember, if you’re working in the professions, you’ll rarely work just 40 hours. And if you work as a salaried employee, you’ll likely have to work part-time to make ends meet. So you never have much free time. To make the best use of outsourcing, you need to determine what strength you have in making your business a success. Your strength could be the ability to focus on pending tasks, making sure they get done. Some people are great at reviewing work and defining ways to improve it. Others may be able to sell successfully. Any of these skills and more can make you a great candidate for outsourcing.
What your business plan should include to prepare for outsourcing
Having decided on your force(s), you must determine how you will use them. First you have to design or have designed subcontracting agreements. Many of these deals can be found online for free or at very little cost. If you have a lot of money to work with, sometimes it’s best to use a lawyer to craft your agreements. Accomplishing these tasks should come down to writing in your business plan. Next, you need to identify several potential subcontractors that you would like to approach. No matter what your field, you’ll find that most people just want to get the job done. Marketing for most of them is a necessary and expensive evil. Therefore, if you approach them with the possibility of bringing additional work, most will be receptive.
Your agreements and the results of your meetings with them should clearly state that you plan to document your services. Which means that it will represent that this is the work of your company. Since they will be getting business on top of what they had to market, and they wouldn’t have to package the final product, they should be willing to offer you a discount on the job. This discount is what you would earn on any work performed for you by subcontractors. Now they would pay him just to bring them a new job.
At the same time, you would pick some of the highest paying jobs you generated and keep them for yourself. This would keep you informed if he plans to review the work of his subcontractors. If his strength lies in his to-do’s, you shouldn’t mind packaging your subcontractors’ work, in his packaging, and being able to discuss it with clients who believe this work was done by your company. If his forte is sales, I don’t think I need to tell him how well he could do. Using subcontractors gives your company an in-depth look. Although you may initially be working at your kitchen table, this can put you on a faster path to working at the boardroom table at your successful company.