Entrepreneurship can sometimes be very lonely as a freelancer, but being self-employed does not mean that you have to do everything yourself. I sometimes thought so in the beginning, but after a few years I also discovered that it is much nicer to work together with other entrepreneurs. In this blog I will tell you which tasks I outsource and why I do that.
Outsource accounting
When I first became an entrepreneur, I received support from a business coach and this also included training to write my business plan. After this training, we were also sent to a course on bookkeeping. It is very nice to know the basics of bookkeeping and in the beginning I mainly kept my administration myself. Through a group for entrepreneurs with a disability, I ended up with an accountant who checked my bookkeeping and made an overview of the costs and income at the end of the year.
In that same group of entrepreneurs
I met an accountant in January 2018 who how to build telemarketing data appealed to me. I hadn’t heard from that other accountant for a few months and had also been looking around for a while for an accountant to outsource my bookkeeping to. Why invest a lot of time in something that you don’t find very interesting or fun if someone else can do it who does enjoy doing it? Since then, Karen from KVS Administraties has been doing my bookkeeping and VAT return, she makes annual accounts and even better, after a while she also became a client of mine and I checked her texts. Karen wrote this guest blog for my website about setting up the administration .
Outsource website maintenance
I first made my website myself with a free theme in WordPress. I kept it simple at first, arranged a domain name and hosting with a cheap provider and thought it was fine. Every now and then I checked if updates needed to be made and I did all the updates. Since the fall of 2018 I learned more and more about online marketing and how I can use it for my own company. My website became more and more important and I thought it was time to have it rebuilt.
I had also met a number of web builders through
Online marketing. One of them created my new website at the time and did the maintenance until she decided to do something else. Then Margriet autozone auto parts eller napa auto from Buro RaDer , who I also know through Ik help jou online, took on the website maintenance. I am not really into the English and technical terms on the back end of the website and sometimes it costs me a lot of time and energy because of my poor eyesight. I am very happy that I can leave a lot of things to Margriet. We both like to communicate clearly and that often makes everything go very smoothly. Margriet also wrote this guest blog about maintaining a WordPress website .
Outsource to a creative virtual assistant
I never did much with images, mainly because. I am visually impaired and sometimes can’t see images well and can’t edit them well. It takes me a lot of energy to see what is on an image. So I mainly stuck to writing texts and also had a logo and profile aob directory pictures. But only text looks very boring and I thought it was time for some more images. I kept postponing choosing images to use. Until early 2019, in a group for entrepreneurs with a disability.
Benefits of outsourcing
For me, the benefits of outsourcing are
- That I have more time for the work that earns me money
- That I have nice entrepreneurs around me to occasionally brainstorm with about parts of my company
- That I expand my network with this
- That I no longer have to put energy into tiring, energy-consuming or boring tasks
- And that this gives me more energy for other fun things, such as spending time with my family
Because I no longer have to put energy into the more complicated aspects of bookkeeping and the website, I have energy left over for checking texts for clients and I can also put more time into writing blogs like this. Things that make me happy and often give me more energy. In the same way, I hope that the people I outsource things to or work with enjoy doing their own work.
To collaborate
In addition to actually outsourcing things, you can also collaborate with others or purchase something from others that you can use. For example, I have had a business coach, had photos taken for my website and social media (by Elise Pragt of Pragt Plaatjes Fotografie and followed various workshops with coaches. And I also follow various training courses at the Ik help jou online Academie , about SEO and online marketing. During workshops and group training courses you can often also network and meet nice entrepreneurs to collaborate with or outsource something to, because most of the entrepreneurs I collaborate with or outsource something to.
