If you’re going it alone, even with one or two key team members at your side, as your business grows, you may find yourself more and more buried in administrative details. It can be overwhelming to make sure your company’s processes (for internal operations, reporting, billing, investing, trading, etc.) are well-documented and continuously updated.
What’s most important to you? If you want to grow, at some point it becomes impossible to oversee every aspect of your business. No one can do it all.
If you’re ready to let go of some of your firm’s most time-consuming responsibilities, yet don’t want to hire and manage additional staff, outsourcing is a really viable solution. Answering “yes” to one or more of these questions could be an indication that you’re ready to outsource at least some area(s) of your business:
- Are you most energized by sitting down with clients and/or gathering assets?
- Do you need to be involved in too many of your firm’s day-to-day administrative tasks?
- Would you like to build more capacity for growth into your business, without adding more team members?
- Do you try to keep up with the latest technology, yet feel your systems could use some updating?
- If more of your time was freed up, could you attract more clients that you truly enjoy working with?
- Would you prefer to take a step back from managing, hiring, and training team members?
- As your business has grown, do you enjoy focusing on investments, performance, and research less than meeting with clients?
- Even if you chose to outsource it in some capacity, would you like to remain involved in—and have the ability to customize—your clients’ investments?
- Would you find value in being able to offer your clients an even higher caliber of proficiency/expertise than you’re able to provide on your own?
The most obvious benefit of outsourcing is freeing up more time for you to focus on what you enjoy and do best. And when you consider what your time is worth (estimate at least $150/hour), it’s likely that outsourcing can also represent a solution that’s cost-effective. In order to create a more efficient and rewarding life (both inside and outside of your business), you may choose to outsource various tasks to a trusted partner or service provider.
If your time is freed up so that you’re able to primarily focus on being a business owner and trusted financial advisor to your clients, you and your business will have the best opportunity to be successful in the long run. Delegating to a trusted partner can also increase your chances of success. Today more than ever, there are many options available to independent advisors. Once you decide which tasks you’d like to outsource in order to free up more of your time, finding the right solution may be easier than you think.
Built by advisors for advisors, FocusPoint Solutions assists advisors seeking to make their businesses more profitable and efficient. Through the development and implementation of a customized business plan which includes outsourcing, advisors supported by FocusPoint are able to focus on growth. As you plan for 2017 and beyond, you may choose to keep your current team in place, hire more, or outsource to an experienced virtual team like the one FocusPoint offers. Only you can decide what best serves you, your clients, and your unique business model.