Small business owners STOP THE INSANITY! Doing everything by yourself to save a buck is actually costing you big time!
Make a list of all the things you are doing this week that will not make your business money. Now label that list, Expensive Tasks. They truthfully are. Any time you spend away from your income producing activities is time that is very expensive to your company.
Here’s where most business owners bring the highest returns to their business. Marketing, sales, leadership, controlling spending, working on growth strategies and client retention.
Here’s some of the tasks I see business owners get tangled up in, that keeps them away from the income producing activities. Graphic design, websites, email and general communication, fulfillment, over creation of products and programs, filing, and managing office drama.
The interesting thing about your expensive tasks is that they can oftentimes be completed by inexpensive hires.
Change the way you view hiring
The first step to getting the support you need in business is to change the way you view hiring. If you are still thinking fulltime means 40 hours, and part time means 20 hours and that you can’t afford to hire, I’d love to introduce you to the virtual hiring market.
The game has changed. Many of the tasks you would traditionally have had an employee do, can be managed by a virtual assistant. A general VA will function like a traditional in house office assistant. But, there are other types of VA’s. You could hire a virtual finance assistant, a virtual marketing assistant, a virtual sales assistant, a virtual graphic designer, or even a virtual CFO.
Talented, experienced professionals in many different fields are leaving corporate America to build a business for themselves. And they are available for hire in your business. You may not be able to afford to bring on a full time CFO. But you could probably afford to have a CFO for 5 hours a month to advise you on the financial health of your company.
Save money by splitting tasks
One of the hiring mistakes I see businesses make comes when they do what I call “Hiring in the middle.” They know they can’t afford top talent, but they need someone who can handle some high skill level tasks, so they pay somewhere in the middle. Here’s why that strategy is ultimately costing you more money than you need to pay.
Let’s use finances for an example.
An accountant may bill out $175 an hour
A bookkeeper may bill out $55 an hour
And if you hire in the right areas of the country, you can find a virtual finance assistant for somewhere between $9-15 an hour.
I’ve seen many businesses realize that they can’t have their accountant on hand all the time, so they “hire in the middle” and hire a bookkeeper. They pay the bookkeeper $55 an hour for about 10 hours a month, and just have the accountant come on during tax season. They hand off some really nice looking books and hope for the best.
Let’s do the math on this.
$55 an hour x 10 hours = $550 a month
That is $6600 a year.
If we split the tasks of managing the finances here’s what it might look like
The finance assistant does all of the account reconciliation, and updating information in quickbooks.
The bookkeeper just checks the books once a month for error.
The accountant comes on quarterly to review the P&L and make sure you are setting aside the right amount of money for taxes. They make recommendations on strategy changes to ultimately save you the most amount of money.
Finance Assistant works for 8 hours a month at $11 an hour= $88 a month
Bookkeeper checks the books for 2 hours at $55 an hour = $110 a month
That brings your yearly spend to $2376 a year.
Now you can afford to bring your accountant in once a quarter in order to have the best strategy for your taxes possible.
This is what I call splitting the tasks and I encourage my clients to utilize this strategy in all of their hires.
Where do I get started?
As much as I am pro hire. I’ve learned the hard way that you need to lay some ground work before you hire. A bad hire is always an expensive waste of time and money. Before the hire make sure you have these things in place.
- Written corporate values and standards
- Standard operating procedures for the position
- A strong plan for training
- Management systems
If you need help in any of these areas, please reach out! We love helping business owners structure for growth.