- Your primary focus needs to be on managing your teams
and delivering great client service.
Get support to help with other functions.
Administrative assistants, accountants,
attorneys, publicists, marketers,
and technology partners perform activities
in their area of expertise
better, faster, and cheaper than you can
when you factor in the opportunity costs of your time.
Pick your providers based on your real needs.
When you're first starting out you don't need to spend
tens of thousands of dollars on a website
or hire an army of attorneys to nail down
every possible legal need.
Grow into your services over time,
both to conserve cash and prevent throwaway work.
Decide what you'll delegate,
what you'll keep doing yourself, and how you'll manage.
When running your own business
it's hard to let go of things.
If you don't truly delegate the work,
you're wasting both time and money.
Be realistic about the benefits you'll get
from outsourcing or delegating that work, though.
For example, at thoughtLEADERS
I do all my own travel arrangements.
Some people think I'm crazy,
and they say, "Well, you should pay somebody
"to be an administrative assistant
"and have them do all your travel."
But when I look at the cost benefit of it,
I'm still going to have to spend time
giving that person all the information for the travel,
I'm going to have to check the travel,
and then I'm going to have to look at my calendar
and make sure everything fits.
I won't save a lot of time having somebody do that for me.
And I'm going to pay a lot of money to have them do it.
Therefore, I keep doing those activities myself.
Contrast that with some of the technology work
that I do outsource.
I have a technology provider who builds my website,
and when I have major changes to the site
I have him do it,
because I might be able to learn how to do it on my own,
but the amount of time that I'm going to put in
far outweighs the amount of money that I need to pay him
to do it right the first time.
Good support is worth the money.
Select great providers, put good contracts in place,
and delegate the work
to get the most out of those resources.