Doing it Yourself is Costing You Money
My dad is a big proponent of do-it-yourself. He’s great at it. He can fix the car, teach a philosophy class, help my sister with engineering homework and re-wire the house. He’s a busy man, but he has the benefit of a steady salary, so the only thing do-it-yourself costs him is the number of hours he can spend napping in front of the TV.
When you run a business and the next dollar you earn is completely reliant on you, sometimes being a jack-of-all trades isn’t profitable. Consider the opportunity cost of spending five hours a week doing your bookkeeping instead of spending five extra hours a week selling. You may think you’re saving money, but paying someone $400 a month to track your receipts doesn’t sound so bad when it means you suddenly have extra time to follow up leads and you book two $5000 weddings that same month.
Think about the different tasks you fulfil as a small business owner. Your core business is taking photographs and editing photographs, but you might also:
- Market your services;
- Sell prints and packages;
- Organise your business and archive photos;
- Do administration and answer the phone;
- Do the bookkeeping and accounting; and
- Organise your printing and shipping.
If you’re a very small business or just starting out, clearly you won’t be able to afford to outsource many of these things, but be creative about what you can get other people to do. Maybe you can take on an intern for a period to help you catch up on archiving and do administration. Unless you’re properly trained, you should definitely have a bookkeeper and accountant. It will take them a fraction of time to do the books that might take you hours to finish. And you should absolutely outsource your printing. If it costs more, pass some cost on to your customers. They’ll be getting a more efficient service anyway, so it makes sense that it might cost a bit more.
If you’re having trouble letting go of doing everything yourself, think about what you want to pay yourself. Is it $100 an hour? Would you pay someone $100 an hour to answer the phone? Probably not, so why would you pay yourself $100 to answer the phone? It simply doesn’t make sense and it definitely costs you money. Pay someone $20 to answer the phone, and turnaround your client’s editing faster to get them their proofs faster than promised. You might get a few referrals from giving outstanding service.
Spend a bit of time assigning costs to the different business functions you fulfil. Give yourself a reasonable wage per hour, and then separate out which tasks are profitable for you to fulfil, and which are losing you money. Once you shift your thinking from the belief that do-it-yourself is cheaper, you’ll be able to let go, outsource a few things and focus your time on profitable operations that will help your business grow.
Pilar Mitchell
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When she’s not writing her blog, Cult of Clothes, Pili is a corporate advisor working with businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to stock-exchange-listed companies. She is fascinated by the evolution of small businesses and loves to combine her passion for writing with the opportunity to help entrepreneurs grow and learn. |
