“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
A hard lesson learned for many solopreneurs or start-up owners is trying to do too many things ourselves. It seems that the metric of success is profitability, and in many ways that’s true, but what’s the cost of profitability? Many successful businesses come in tandem with failed relationships, often because of the stubborn desire to do everything personally.
Starting a company comes with pages of checklists to get done and metrics to decipher. Every time you mark something off, you’ll often add 3 more things. It never ends.
The running checklist should not scare or dwindle your entrepreneurial spirit; instead, realize that finding collaborators can benefit you. Not only will you get your work done efficiently, but you’ll also stay sane; you can’t pour from an empty cup.
But accepting help can be scary. Your idea, service, product, and business is your child… simply handing off your child is not the easiest thing to do. And to be fair, you probably trust a babysitter more than a consultant.
As small business owners, we need to realize that help is needed. When we talk about raising children, many will throw around the phrase “it takes a village”, but this also applies to your fledgling entrepreneurial efforts.
To follow the analogy further, you don’t just want some random kid off the street helping shepherd our progeny, but rather someone we trust. Likewise, we are potentially paying an individual or agency to grow and manage aspects of our business.
Website Help
So you have to create a unique and functional website for your product because we live in a digital world. But it is hard. Websites can be difficult to develop because there are so many specific details that need to be added.
Creating a website takes time, and we do not have any to spare. We have so many other aspects of our small business that creating a website and making it aesthetically pleasing can feel daunting.
How do I choose a color? How many pages do I need? What even goes on a website?
Questions like these fill the minds of many small business owners. Trying to figure this out takes away the time of working on other aspects of the business.
To narrow down the seemingly endless list of to-dos utilizing a website builder can be a handy way to condense your efforts. Many hosting sites even offer services to design a mobile-friendly website, optimize the website, and place you on local listings (i.e., Google, Yahoo). These little tasks that you cannot find the time to complete are all finished and done efficiently.
You’ll also find that many of these companies have conveniently offered all of the services you need for your website in one place. Not only can you find both web hosting and domains for your site under the same roof, but also email registration, eCommerce integration, and more.
Third-Party Sales
The key objective for many businesses is to “increase sales by X%”. If you are selling a product, you may want it to be featured in more stores and on websites to gradually grow your revenue.
Many businesses shoot for the stars and try to have their product featured in name market stores. It can take time to build these relationships and have your product placed in a popular marketplace. While trying to develop these relationships, many small businesses also use third party selling sites, like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart.com, to generate an income and get market feedback on their product.
The logistics of managing your inventory across different platforms can be a bit of a challenge if you are selling tangible products on these third-party sales sites. You can get in a bit of a bind if you oversell your product. It may be helpful to invest in an inventory management software to help keep track of all of your sales.
Wouldn’t overselling your product be a great problem to have?
But first, people have to be able to find your product. How do they know it even exists? You can go through traditional marketing channels to get the word out, but you’ll find that there are also Amazon SEO services out there that can collaborate on the best way to position your product higher in the search rankings. Often they look at everything from reviews, AMS ads, deals, content, and much more.
This is something that can take quite a bit of strategy and finesse, which may be beneficial to learn in the long-run, but working with a specialist allows you to focus on the parts of the business that only you can do.
Expert Help
Small businesses focus on sales, but in order to earn those sales, there are some extra steps we must take. These include utilizing experts in public relations, SEO, and marketing. By finding experts who can help improve your business in these areas, you are able to further your reach and better market your product.
These agencies are experts in multiple fields and make your job easier. They allow you to focus on singular aspects of your small business, rather than spreading yourself thin across the board. By hiring these helpful tools, you can organize your small business and receive tips from people who have been in the field for a while.
The useful tips and tricks these individuals can share are worth the price. They have been around the block a few times, and you never know what useful information they can provide.
Final Thought
Your time is valuable. What are the items on your never ending “to-do” list that you can give to someone else?
You may find that an investment in support is an investment in yourself.
