How to Use Contractors to Grow your Business
Hi Guys,
I want to spend a little bit of time talking to you today about what or how you should use freelancers, contractors, and the gig economy to grow your business. I’m doing this hot off my recent New York visit, where I gave a speaking presentation on how to build systems and run small businesses like real businesses.
As we discussed the gig economy briefly during my presentation, one of the participants commented on how the gig economy is going to be about 50% of our actual economy by 2025. That is a huge number and it is a pool of resources that you, as a business owner, can tap into as you grow and develop your business.
However, what I often see with business owners is that they’re not sure what resources they need at certain levels and then how to use these resources within their business.
Why are contractors the best resource for project work?
So let’s say you’re just getting started. You’re growing, you’re trying to pull together a new business, trying to sell more of your product, trying to generate revenue, etc.. In this instance, the gig economy and freelancers/contractors/virtual resources are really helpful in terms of project work. Why? Because there are probably several big rocks sitting on your to-do list that will either remain there or eat up your time. That kind of thing will weigh on your consciousness on a daily basis as you try to push forward and build your business.
An example of this might be something as simple as “build a website.” It might be an email automation sequence or graphic design components. These are all great things that you can outsource to a freelancer or a contractor because it has a definite result, especially when you’re in this growth phase of your business. And, because of that definite result, you know exactly what you want to get, which makes it easier to delegate to someone who knows that field. Then, you can just cross it off of your to-do list.
Building a team
When you move into the next phase of your business, where you’re bringing in sales, you have clients, and you’re more focused on ramping up sales and weaving systems together tightly so that cash flows increase. At this point, you’re probably looking more for ongoing part-time support – the way to benefit from contractors or freelancers here is to offload several ongoing repetitive tasks and delegate them.
This is where you bring people on and develop your team, and possibly have a virtual assistant that will be working with you on an ongoing (but part-time) basis… instead of having continuous freelancers doing one-off jobs for you. As you develop your team, you’ll be able to hand things off that are repetitive within your business, at which point you’re probably going to handle a lot more administrative work. However, this will be the point in your business where you’ll be creating sales systems for people on your team to execute.
At this point, you might see that your marketing has become quite laborious… which means it’s the perfect time to outsource it to someone who’s working part-time and can execute it on an ongoing basis.
That’s how you’re going to use a virtual contract or a freelance resource as you ramp up your business: from one to several at a time, helping you on an ongoing basis to complete several projects at a time as you grow your business. And what I’ve noticed at this stage for many of my clients is that the managerial work required to run everything smoothly becomes cumbersome. This then becomes the perfect time to bring someone in who can run the operational side of your business. Someone with managerial experience, who is ready to take on a full-time role.
Stay in your “genius zone”
Manager roles can still be contracted on a part-time basis – but considering the magnitude of this role within your business at this level, it’s probably best to hire someone who can continually execute for you so that you can stay in your “genius zone” and do more of what you enjoyed doing within your business. That may be coaching, consulting, developing new products, new courses, or anything else that may put you closer to landing bigger opportunities.
It’s something I’ve often seen: clients who’ve set this all up and then start pursuing speaking opportunities, course or coaching programs. But it’s only after they’ve settled their primary business down and handed over the day-to-day operations to a manager who’s overseeing the other resources and moving parts.
Conclusion
All in all, this primer will hopefully help you all in finding ways to use the gig economy, freelancers, contractors, and virtual workers within your business.
As I mentioned, these are the three basic scenarios where you’ll reap massive benefits from freelancers. One is as you starting, where you’ll probably only need freelancers who are going to do one-off projects for you. Second is when you’re ramping up, which is when you’re going to use part-time, ongoing support resources. And third is as you get to the later stages of your business and you’re looking to find other, larger opportunities – only then do you need to find someone who can handle the day-to-day operations and managerial tasks so that you can be the CEO of it all.
If you have any questions or want to talk about what resources you might need in your business, feel free to drop me a line – I always love talking with you guys!
Until next time,
Diane
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