You worked hard to get your business off the ground. As a small business owner, you know—better than anyone—just how many things a business actually has to do. A well-run business does much more than just the customer-facing product and service-related tasks that people can see. Behind the scenes, you need to handle the sorts of tasks that businesses of all kinds have to tackle: things like payroll and taxes, legal concerns, human resources work, and more.
Small business owners are talented, smart, and driven people. They can be good at many things, but nobody is great at everything. This is why there’s one more thing that it takes to be a successful business owner: a great sense of when you should turn to another organization for help.
Confidence is key in business, but hubris can be self-defeating. As a business owner, you need to recognize where your business’ expertise lies. You need to know what your business should be doing, but you also need to know what your business should not do. You need to know when to outsource.
Every business is different, but we have some ideas to help you get started. Here’s what your business shouldn’t do.
Legal work
When you found a business, you need to make sure that it is set up properly. That means getting the money together, finding the right business space, hiring the right people, and — crucially — setting up your business legally.
If you don’t have the proper legal organization for your business, you could run into real trouble. You need to make sure that your business is compliant with all relevant laws. You need to make sure that your own finances are isolated as much as possible from your business’ finances, so that a blow to your business doesn’t ruin you personally. And all of this means that you need to get a lawyer. There’s no substitute for proper legal advice from a trained and qualified attorney who is familiar with your situation, so make no mistake: you need a lawyer when you set up your business.
Payroll and accounting
You’re good at something, and that’s why you turned that passion and skill into a career. But unless you run a firm that specializes in accounting, there’s a good chance that your skills and passions are not the right fit for handling the sorts of payroll and accounting tasks you’ll need to take care of for your business.
Fortunately, there are folks out there that were born with a passion and skill for payroll and accounting. And just as you’ve turned your skills into a career, so have they. Track down a great outsourced accounting firm and rest easy knowing that you’ve got all the math done right. You’ll get powerful accounting solutions that make it easier for you to see how your business is faring, and you’ll retain great employees who know they’ll be paid on time.
Taxes
Hand-in-hand with payroll and accounting go taxes. Taxes are frustrating and complicated things, and doing them yourself can be a massive headache. If you mess things up, you could be in serious trouble. You don’t want the Internal Revenue Service as an enemy!
By using business tax services you’ll have a whole lot less to do and a whole lot more time to focus on the things that make your business great, and you’ll be able to rest easy knowing that you’ve followed the tax laws to the letter.
Benefits
Keeping great employees means paying them fairly. It also means providing them with benefits like health insurance. But a small business doesn’t usually have the resources to work directly with health insurance providers and other big benefits providers — which is why this is another thing that should be outsourced.
Rely on a company that managed benefits packages for small businesses and get your employees benefits that will help you acquire and retain the talent you need. Then forget about that stuff and get back to focusing on what your business is really about.