Small business owners often say, “I wish I could spend more time on my business and less time in my business.” As startups grow, each day’s to-do list can become overwhelming. Many entrepreneurs become too busy with menial tasks to focus on important big-picture planning. But unless you invest time in setting and meeting long-term goals, your business may flounder without considering these tasks to outsource.
Reclaim your time and spend it in better ways. If you think it’s too expensive to outsource some of your tasks, think again. While you may not have the money to hire a full-time employee, there are providers you can partner with to lighten your workload. Let these folks handle the easy stuff, so you can focus on what you’re passionate about and not tasks to outsource.
1. Outsource your payroll
Running payroll for a small business can be a headache. If you operate your business in different states, you have to stay up on the requirements for filing taxes in each one. And if you’re late in filing your payroll tax, you could face penalties of up to 15 percent of the past due amount. Why give the IRS a reason to come knocking at your door? To stay in compliance with ever-changing labor laws and tax codes, and to stay out of the red, enlist the help of a payroll service.
2. Hire an accountant
Did you know small businesses that forecast cash flow on a monthly basis have an 80% survival rate? That’s already a smart reason to hire a professional accountant, but there’s also time and money to be saved. For example, your accountant may review your monthly expenses to see where there’s room to trim the fat, sniff out hidden tax deductions and even alert you before you run into cash flow problems.
3. Delegate email marketing
For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in return on investment. But with all the demands on your time, keeping in touch with customers can fall by the wayside, leaving dollars on the table. That’s why it makes sense to hire a dedicated email expert to manage your email marketing for you. A professional email marketing service will develop campaigns, create catchy emails and track the results for a fraction of the price you’d pay to engage a marketing agency or add an email specialist to your team.
4. Offload your social media
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, are a great way to tell the story of your business, but too many businesses dive in with no better strategy than to build a following. As a result, their content ends up falling flat. You can spend big bucks on social media, but if there’s no strategy involved and no metrics being measured, you may as well be throwing that money out the window. If you don’t have the time or know-how to do social media the right way, entrust this important task to a team of social media experts. Social media services will make the most of every dollar you spend on social media by posting on your behalf, creating advertising campaigns to target new followers and telling your company’s story with standout style.
Time is money, so protect it
Remember when you first started your business? You were ready to take on any and every task that came up. Now that it’s growing, you could work around the clock and still not complete all your to-do’s, especially if those tasks are time-consuming. So, why not preserve your time by focusing on some tasks and outsourcing others?
You won’t get a gold star for doing it all, but you might end up in hot water (or burnt out), so prioritize tasks accordingly.
The bottom line
Sometimes you have to spend money to save it. Hiring a professional service to handle certain tasks will not only free up your precious time, but it will give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you won’t end up paying for mistakes down the road. That’s worth its weight in gold.