Running a Business from Home | Home Business Magazine

We all know of the famous adage "measure thrice, cut once." Here’s another one: "you gotta make money to spend money." But just like you don’t need to reinvest all of the money into your business, you can’t always wait until you have 100% of information to take a leap of faith. Sometimes, a solid 95% will do.

Any decision involving resources (whether time, money or human) shouldn’t be taken lightly. Throwing resources at your business won’t guarantee success. On the other hand, being too cautious can put a dent in your growth plans.

Investing isn’t about a sudden influx of cash, nor is it something you do and forget about. It’s a tricky area where experience and strategy are very much welcome. The first step is identifying what you want to improve and figure out how to go about doing it. Whether it’s growing your revenue, efficiency, product expansion, or team – it all requires certain knowledge, experience and time commitment.

You can’t be everywhere at once

Business owners are not strangers to constraints and making do with what they have. At the same time, many of them have tasks that negate the pleasures of running their business. For some, it could be the administrative work, for others, it’s a marketing campaign or creative writing. Whatever the case, it makes excellent business sense to outsource these activities to third parties. But doing so doesn’t have to be fraught with fear and anxiety. Rather, it can unlock a number of benefits for your business.

Saved time

Sometimes you work in your business for so long, that you forgot to work on it. This is particularly true for small business owners, who get so caught up in the grind that they don’t realize their time can be freed up for more important activities.

Saved money

Expanding the team is costly: there’s overhead, rent, training, as well as accounting and taxes to consider. Consequently, you should still be mindful and avoid outsourcing work that may be easier, faster or more beneficial to perform yourself.

Saved energy

While money and time are important, your strategy in choosing what, when and how to outsource is what makes the biggest difference. It’s an energy that could be focused on everything from managing more effectively to coaching, training and instilling in your team a sense of pride and purpose.

The problem with freelancers

Inconsistency

Most of us work in different ways, and there is little consistency is the ways freelancers work, deal with feedback or handle revisions to the finished product. It makes the workflows inefficient and adds an extra layer of stress for businesses.

Inefficiency

Businesses usually operate on a tight schedule, yet freelancers tend to juggle numerous projects at once. Since they may not be available at a moment’s notice, freelancers can’t quickly react to changing directives or deadlines.

Unpredictability

Even if you do manage to build a perfect, long-term relationship with a high-quality freelancer, there’s no guarantee they’ll move on to greener pastures. Without a personal relationship or legal ties to the company, there’s less desire to stick around.

The problem with hiring more

Say you’re deliberating between adding freelancers versus expanding your team. How do you know which investment will prove to be the most financially viable? Consider all the potential cost-benefit scenarios, as well as the return of any activity and their risks.

For example, if you’re interested in redesigning a website, but there is no guarantee that the ROI of hiring a web designer and developer will net you more in six months. That’s why taking the time to research the feasibility of nearshoring a particular job is so important. Explore how other businesses performed in similar challenges and markets to yours.

The solution is near… Nearshoring

The classic definition of nearshoring is hiring workers in a country geographically close to you. Nearshoring limits cultural or time zone differences while offering significant savings over hiring in the same country. An example would be an American company hiring customer support staff in Mexico. This can be done by the company or through an IT nearshoring consultant such as Mobilunity.

Here’s the catch with the idea of nearshoring: every company is different. That’s why defining your core needs is a must to bring out any significant value out of nearshoring. Let’s say you run a marketing team and can’t afford to bring on a full-time graphic designer. You rule out hiring freelancers due to their overhead, inefficiency and potential unpredictability. Nearshoring a designer could be that ideal "sweet spot" in your situation.

Nearshoring shouldn’t take away from business goals

A robust and well-designed nearshoring strategy will save you time, money and depending on your industry, offer you a unique competitive advantage.

What it should not do is create bottlenecks in your processes and add to your stress levels. Thankfully, all this can be avoided by properly vetting your nearshoring service provider. Create a playbook or guideline for remote employees to streamline communication with your team. This can iron out a lot of misunderstandings and make your processes more efficient.

Properly implementing nearshoring has the power to impact your revenues, operations and profits. Just be sure to "measure thrice" before making any large human resource decisions.