Should you be a full-stack entrepreneur and do everything by yourself or should you start outsourcing tasks for faster business growth? In this KLIK CHAT episode, Paulina, Augustas, Kristina, and Tobias share the main things that you need to know before outsourcing and how to find out which tasks you should focus on.
Our guests Paulina Masson, the founder of Shopkeeper and Amazon seller, Tobias Fischer, the founder of Sermondo, Kristina Mertens, the business development manager at Sermondo, and Augustas Kligys, the founder of Orange Klik.
Pros and Cons of Full-Stack Entrepreneurship
A full-stack entrepreneur is the one who fills all of the roles in a team while building a business from scratch. But is being a full-stack entrepreneur actually efficient?
Talking from his experience, Tobias believes it’s better to focus only on one thing and outsource everything else since it’s quite impossible to be good at everything. Still, sometimes he finds himself in a situation where he has to deal with things he is not very familiar with, such as accounting or programming. It often creates an inner conflict whether you should dive into things that are necessary for your business even though it’s not your field of interest at all.
However, the truth is that when you are just starting out, you always end up doing everything by yourself – it’s quite inevitable, as Paulina thinks. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing – as a beginner entrepreneur, you need to try everything. That’s the only way how you can find out which things you are most passionate about and which tasks you find struggling to deal with. Paulina makes another good point, saying that before outsourcing, you need to try everything on yourself to know a step-by-step process so you can clearly explain it to another person. However, outsourcing is not a very easy thing to do – Paulina herself has been working on Shopkeeper for three years now, already built a team of 11 people and yet she still considers herself a full-stack entrepreneur.
After learning all the things that are happening in your business, you are finally ready to decide which tasks you can easily outsource. There is one more thing to keep in mind before taking action – you must know the basics of how things are done in order to evaluate if your employee is doing a good job. Most of the time entrepreneurs hire people to outsource tech or accounting tasks and have lots of issues because they can’t understand if the job is done properly and if they pay a reasonable price for the service. So remember – you must be able to monitor and evaluate how things are being done.
Know the Value of Tasks You Outsource
There are things that cannot be outsourced, such as how to market or grow your business. These are the main components that every entrepreneur should deal with by themselves. But how to filter which tasks to outsource and which tasks can be done only by you?
Kristina thinks you should draw the line between the skills that are crucial for the survival of your business and skills that create additional value, such as content production or social media managing. These are the things that can be easily given to your employee without having too much trouble. And when it comes to outsourcing, Augustas believes that the key component here is trust. When you trust a person, there is no need to worry if a job will be done properly and in time so you can focus on your things instead of constantly double-checking. Right now he has a few virtual assistants whom he fully trusts and it saves a fair amount of time and energy that can be used in more important ways.
Even though you have an employee to work on certain tasks, always be prepared to take it over anytime. Just imagine a situation where you lose an accountant and suddenly have to deal with numbers on your own. Again, it raises a question should you know how to deal with accounting in order to take over whenever it’s necessary or focus only on things that you’re good at? Well, in this case, it’s a bit of both.
As it is important to understand the value of tasks that you outsource, it’s also crucial to understand whether you focus on the right things. Recently Paulina started interviewing different Amazon influencers and noticed that most of them are focusing on being famous. The truth is that fame does not necessarily resonate with business success, meaning getting more likes on social media does not make a direct profit to your business. That’s why it’s important to be a full-stack entrepreneur when you start your business so you clearly know where you should focus on more.
Tips on How to Outsource:
- Don’t be afraid to try everything by yourself. You need to know the basics of all the things before outsourcing so you can train others.
- Be sure you know how to manage tasks and how does step-by-step process work.
- Search for possibilities to outsource from the very beginning for a lower price, so you can focus on your business growth (for example, check this out: https://genm.co/).
- Know what skills are crucial for the survival of your business and what skills only create additional value – those are exactly the ones you would want to outsource.
- It’s crucial to understand whether you focus on the right things. Don’t be obsessed with being famous – instead, pay attention to what creates direct value to your business.
Find Paulina on LinkedIn. And be sure to visit Shopkeeper’s website for more! You can also take a look at the DEMO of Shopkeeper on our website here.
To reach Tobias and Kristina to find out more about Sermondo, email at kristina@sermondo.com, or use a contact form you can find on https://sermondo.com/
Sources mentioned in the video:
- https://genm.co – if your business is in need of some extra help, GenM has students to help you with your business marketing.
Klik Chat series #4
This is the #4 episode of the Klik Chat series where together with our guests we discuss trendy topics, reveal lots of tips and tricks, and share effective personal strategies on how to grow your online business.
