Many home-based entrepreneurs revel in the freedom of only being responsible to themselves. You may be the same, enjoying the complete control of your office space, and never having to cater to anyone’s whims rather than your own.
Unfortunately, even those who embrace the benefits of a solitary working pattern may find themselves struggling with one particular element: the inability to obtain additional expertise.
What is additional expertise?
It’s fair to assume that you have gone into business because you hold a level of expertise in your chosen area.
However, knowing how to perform the actual core operations of your business is far from the only requirement you’ll face. You will have to wear many hats over the course of running your business: you will be the bookkeeping expert for your company, the customer service rep, the IT manager, and the person who scrutinizes legal documents like contracts.
Unfortunately, being comfortable running your core business operations doesn’t necessarily mean that you can manage all of the elements of running an actual business. If you run an ecommerce store, for example, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you understand the ins and outs of your tax-deductible expenses or how to manage your IT system – but a home-based business will require you to perform these tasks as well as manage your ecommerce site.
Additional expertise is the answer to this problem; you can look for experts in these additional areas to manage that side of the business, so you can focus on the core product.
Why do home-based entrepreneurs struggle to find additional expertise?
Let’s return to the above example, but imagine you chose to move your ecommerce business into a conventional office rather than working solo from home. In this scenario, you would be able to hire staff to take care of business areas such as IT, account keeping, or legal compliance. You would then be free to work on your store, knowing the other aspects of the business were in qualified hands.
Unfortunately, this solution isn’t possible for most home-based businesses. It’s just you, flying solo – and this can leave you no choice but to be your business’ expert on a number of non-ecommerce related areas.
Why is this a problem?
No one is an expert in every area of business. This means that in some areas, you may lack the insider knowledge and understanding required to ensure these areas run smoothly. In others, you may be more than able to handle the task, but it’s time-consuming to do so – after all, if you spend all morning trying to fix your computer or dealing with a customer complaint, you’re not actually running your store. Time spent on these additional tasks is time not spent sourcing products or managing your product descriptions, for example, which can harm your overall productivity level.
So what’s the alternative?
Outsourcing. Outsourcing can sometimes seem like an option that is only available to ‘big’ companies, but this isn’t the case; home-based entrepreneurs can benefit from the help of an accountancy agency or managed IT services too. By outsourcing, you’re able to free your own time to focus on your business’ central operations and access the additional expertise your business needs.
Final thoughts
There is no need to go without the additional expertise your business needs to thrive just because you work from home. By outsourcing key areas such as IT, customer service, legal compliance, and accountancy, your business can grow in strength, and you can enjoy a free schedule that allows you to focus on the business itself.
