Have you seen those recent Staples commercials with Dave? He represents the typical small business owner, and illustrates that when you’re running your own show you’re often forced to wear every hat in the organization – spreading your attention far too thin – certainly too thin to effectively grow your business.

The Dave from Staples commercials are clever, well done, and most importantly, poignantly illustrate an issue that plagues many small businesses and even crushes a few: the DIY trap.

Don’t DIY Your Small Business to Death

I don’t know about you, but all four of my grandparents were children of the Great Depression. They came of age amid the United States most devastating financial crisis. A time when quite a few wealthy and well off people lost everything. Circumstance were so dire that many people literally starved to death in the streets.
The children of the Great Depression believe that society’s lavish, wonton spending, lack of frugality, and disregard for consequences in the nineteen-teens and so-called roaring 20s created this horrific financial collapse. This belief was handed down through several generations and is the driving force behind the philosophy that dictates: you shouldn’t pay anyone to do anything you can do (or can figure out how to do) yourself.
The problem with this philosophy, particularly for small business owners, is that you simply can’t do everything.
You could try, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all, and you’d just end up frustrated and exhausted and defeated. And even though you may technically be able to perform a certain task, that doesn’t mean you can perform it effectively, or have the expertise to execute the task with skill or precision, i.e. their are a plethora of trained professionals who could do a better job than you.
If you really want your business to grow and be successful long term, it’s time to start delegating necessary but tedious or overtly difficult (read not a part of your expertise) and time consuming task to those better suited to handle them.
So what task can or should you let go of?

Web Design & Email Marketing

WordPress is a snap, anybody can do it, right?
All those WYSIWYG (what you see is what get) templates (1&1 Small Business, GoDaddy Website Tonight) are super easy – just point and click – that’s what the commercials say anyway.
For the record: no. No WordPress is not a snap. A generic WordPress site(giving your site www.wordpress.yourbusinessname.com website address – not professional) is relatively easy to set – oh and also: worthless. You’re shilling for your business, not WordPress. Trust me, they’ve got plenty of action, they don’t need your help.
A custom WordPress site (which is what you need if you’re serious about growing your business) with branded url (www.yourbusinessname.com) is not easy to create. You’re not a web designer and shouldn’t wasting your valuable time blundering through trying construct a website.
Hire a professional.
And those 1&1 and GoDaddy templates; yeah they’re great if you want a site that’s obviously a template, i.e. generic and souless, doesn’t match any of your branding and generally looks like a piece of shite.
How about this idea instead: hire a professional.
Bottom line: hire a professional.
It’s probably not as expensive as you think, and definitely worth the price. Here are some quality referrals for designers who can help you out regardless of your physical location:
Sheila Dent – Pixel Relish | Martyn Chamberlin – Two Hour Blogger| Taryn Wallis – Phenomenoodle
As for email marketing – an incredibly valuable small business marketing tool – same logic outlined above applies here too.
Sure you can sign-up with MailChimp, Aweber or Constant Contact and get the basics going. But you’re still faced with a lot of trial and error. And as your list grows and your desire to do more with your email marketing campaigns, you’ll quickly find yourself stumbling around totally out of your depth. If you want your email marketing campaigns to look professional, hire a professional.
Here again – Sheila Dent – Pixel Relish can help a lot!

Creating Marketing Materials (Graphic Design and Copywriting)

Flyers, brochures, mailers and menus are all fantastic and often vital small business marketing tools.
Sure, you can use the crappy MS Word templates to your generate marketing materials. And they will look like…well…crappy templates. Or you could wastes tons of time trying to figure out how to use a bootlegged version of a more sophisticated layout program, and probably end up with less than stellar results.
And the layout is only part of your problem. How adept are you at written communication? Can you covey an offer and really sell your business in writing? Undoubtedly you know your business better than anyone, but what you know and how well you communicate are two different things.
So instead of giving yourself brain damage trying to design and write effective marketing materials, why don’t you: hire a professional.
Low and behold, it just happens Marketing Expertise (sponsor of this blog) can help – check em’ out!

And Also…

The items outlined above are just a couple of examples that pertain to marketing, which happens to be my area of expertise. But there are tons of other task, both business related and personal in nature, that if farmed out (delegated) could not only save you time, but also enable you to focus  on growing your business and making more money. Common tasks like:

• Back of House Operations (accounts payable and receivable, invoicing, and general accounting)
• Administrative Duties (office management, filing, returning voice mails and emails)
• Lawn mowing, snow shoveling and painting your house
• Housekeeping, grocery shopping and childcare

could all be taken off your plate and free up time for you to not only focus on your business, but also enjoy your family and live your life.
And with most of the tasks outlined above, a trained professional will do a better, faster job.
Don’t be like Dave (from Staples) and DIY your business to death – seek the professional help you need to make your business a success!