Five Experts to Hire for your Business (plus, One you Shouldn’t)
Invest in time, the same way we invest our money. Intentionality.
One goal, as business strategists, is to help entrepreneurs intentionally manage their time, ensuring each hour spent is maximized. The quicker we learn to optimize our time, to exponentially benefit ourselves and our business, the better.
This blog is all about hiring out the tasks that:
Takes too much time; and,
We don’t like.
So we can get more (insert turd emoji) done, make more money, and improve our time management (pardon our French).
Time is Money and Money is Time
And we can’t talk about time without talking about opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the loss of a potential benefit that could have been enjoyed had another choice been chosen. For example, the opportunity cost of spending our bonus check on a vacation, instead of a new car, is the loss of a potential new car.
Every time we decide to focus our attention in one direction, we lose the opportunity to spend that time elsewhere. For our businesses, the more we can redirect our time to revenue generating activities, the more profitable and strategic our companies become.
Focus your Time on Income Generating Activities
When we first began taking a salary at Local Union, we spent 3+ hours researching Payroll 101 and we were still confused. How much should we withhold for taxes and how do process the payment (did we write a check)?
We reached out to Debra from the SBA, and she asked us a few eye-opening questions:
Debra: “How long have you spent researching about payroll? Do you feel comfortable paying yourself now?”
Local Union: “Three hours, so far but we’re not comfortable at all. There’s still so much we need to research”
Debra: “What else could you do with those three hours? Let’s say you spent five more hours researching how to pay yourself, then two hours each month processing your own payroll. That’s a total of 32 hours in one year. What else could you do for 32 hours?”
Local Union: “We could spend that time generating income. We could follow up on leads, convert more customers, and launch marketing campaigns.”
Debra was reminding us how valuable our time was. In 32 hours, we could find numerous clients that would not only pay for the $50/monthly payroll company but would generate thousands of dollars in annual income for us. This small investment in a payroll company means more time back in our days to do what we do best: help small businesses grow strategically.
Should everything be hired out? No! There is a great advantage to learning new things and running systems internally in your business. But the reality is, we can’t do it all. However, if you’re not interested in aspects of running a business and the opportunity cost is big enough, consider hiring experts to help you.
We’ve rounded up our 5 Experts you Need to Hire, plus 1 we recommend you don’t (no matter what people say). And of course, this list will vary for each of you, based off your interests and needs.
The 5 Experts you Need, so You Can Grow your Business
Tax Accountant
Unless you love doing taxes, having a tax accountant or CPA is a great investment for your business. Not only will they help you file your annual taxes, many will assist you in making strategic financial decisions for your business (that could save you money or time down the road). Plus, they protect many business owners from making mistakes or breaking laws with the IRS (and many of us don’t know we’re doing anything wrong).
Some small business owners also delegate their monthly bookkeeping to a bookkeeper (which is substantially cheaper than a monthly CPA). If you have a lot of receipts or incoming / outgoing cashflow, this might be worth your investment!
Business Strategy & Management
The truth is many entrepreneurs have passion and talent, yet lack formal business backgrounds. Business strategists, consultants, and coaches are experts in creating plans and processes for your company to ensure you prioritize
What to spend your money on
What to spend your time on
How to grow your business strategically & sustainably, ensuring everything works well together
Processes and tools for employees, partners, and more
If you are great at what you do but need more structure to long-term growth, consider hiring a business consultant. Need help with development and accountability? A business coach might be for you. Local Union provides both strategy & coaching for their clients.
Branding and Design
A product can be quickly outdated yet a successful brand is priceless. When creating your brand, it’s critical you intentionally create a business and experience that reflects your long-term vision. Investing in a professional graphic designer to craft your vision may be worth the investment. Think about it - your logo and brand will appear on EVERYTHING, from emails to your website to social to business cards. Besides your face, this will be what customers see the most.
Our advice? Ensure you have a strong business plan, vision, and Customer Avatar in mind before investing in your Brand / Logo. A good graphic designer can take your business strategy and execute a design based off the direction you have in mind. It will be a better return on investment if you’ve done the work (alone or with a business consultant) to ensure you know exactly where your customers and company are headed.
HR / Payroll
If our example of Payroll didn’t convince you, maybe this will. Once you’re ready to hire employees it’s critical you are compliance with your state laws. While it’s good to learn these things, and not rely 100% on an expert, there are HR consultants and companies who can take out all of the confusion and help our companies grow efficiently.
Did you know in the state of Florida there are complicated rules around who we can hire, whether they are contractors or employees? And each employer must have things like Company Handbooks and Worker’s Comp? A Handbook alone may need to be ~60 pages (think how many hours that will take)!
Tip: partner with a local HR consultant but handle payroll with a reputable, big company. We’ve heard horror stories about small payroll companies embezzle and take on too much liability. Quickbooks, ADP, and Gusto are some well-liked payroll names.
Photography
A picture tells a thousand words and in today’s time, everything is visual. Having subpar photos just doesn’t cut it (especially for product-based businesses). Unless you are a professional photographer, consider hiring people to take product photos, headshots, and images that you can utilize across all your channels. From email marketing to social media to advertisements, it’s critical we create cohesive, seamless experiences.
The One Expert I Don’t Recommend Hiring
Social Media Content Managers
I have a feeling I may get a lot of pushback for this but I do NOT recommend hiring a social media manager. Here’s why:
Social media is meant to be social!
Engagement and personal connection are key to Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Social Media Content Managers are great people who have an incredibly important job but here’s the issue… most business owners don’t strategize here.
Is your goal to engage with followers and build a social brand? Or is your goal simply to promote information or new products?
If your goal is to build a relationship with followers, you need to build a brand that looks, acts, and represents your values & personality. That needs a person who lives and breathes our company. No matter how “good” a social media expert is, they don’t work for you and at the end of the day, you are one of a handful of clients they are representing.
An external person will never represent your brand as well as you or an internal employee can.
A social media account managed by an external party will simply be a promotional account. There’s nothing wrong with this but it’s not social nor personal.
Again: what is your goal?
To be fair, there are instances when having an expert handle your social media are appropriate. If you have social media simply to act as a webpage of information (hours, menu, etc.) and don’t use it to gain more customers or educate followers, then sure - outsourcing might be for you.
I also 100% believe you can hire social media strategist, people who help you learn the skills & tricks to grow your marketing efforts. But a social media content manager? Maybe not!
But if you are trying to engage and truly do social media the “right” way, it needs to be internal.