If you’re boss of a small firm or an aspiring entrepreneur looking to start your own business, you’ll realise that there’s more than just incorporating your company. Should you write a business plan, or should you outsource it to a strategist who can validate the course of action you want to take? Should you build your own website, or hire an agency to do it for you? What about the content for your brochures and blog posts? Is it worth the time and effort to do it yourself?

Cash-strapped individuals will not hesitate to keep everything in-house at the expense of overworking themselves and their employees. Over time, you and your staff members may experience unhappiness in the workplace.

But wait, there’s a solution for that.

According to a recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, outsourcing tasks that you dislike can lead to greater satisfaction in life. Outsourcing work that needs to be done is like buying time for ourselves. This is especially important in a world where we feel increasingly stressed over the lack of it.

However, it’s not possible to outsource every single aspect of your business operations. Before determining what should or should not be handled by an external agency, consider the following questions.

How long will it take you to get the job done?

Assuming you have a new website that needs concise and persuasive copy in it, how long do you think it will take you to find the right words? A day? A week? Possibly even more.

From our experience talking to many businesses in Singapore, it takes about 1-2 months to finalise all content on a basic website. And that doesn’t even include content for the blog section.

Although writing may seem easy at the start, you’ll find that it takes more than just a literate person to strategically convey your brand voice and message. Surely you wouldn’t want to spend close to 2 months struggling over your content, when you could use that time to gain traction for your company?

Do you have the expertise for the task?

More often than not, we hate doing certain tasks because we are simply not good at executing them. But not knowing how to do everything at an expert level is okay.

If coding and building a software isn’t your forte, why not let an experienced development team handle it for you?  Unless it is you core business function, you shouldn’t let it hold you back from doing other more productive things.

But where do I find contractors to do the work for me?

A quick search on Google may give you some options, but they won’t be the most suitable for your company. Most results on the front page are agencies who have worked with bigger organisations, and may have a preference to continue doing so.

Even if they do accept the opportunity to work with you, you may not be a priority on their list of clients.

Always ask for a one-to-one meetup with the agencies you’re contacting to find out more. Even if you’re hesitant on engaging them, it won’t hurt to be upfront about it. You can even show them what you’ve done and get feedback from the professionals themselves.

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