Flying solo doesn’t have to mean doing everything yourself. You can
exchange cash for someone else’s time and effort, so you can focus on your
primary business goals.

Running your own business involves a lot of role play: in addition to doing
the work for your client, you have to keep up with all sorts of papers,
make contacts, and play salesman. Any one of these tasks could be a
full-time occupation, and you have the joy of doing it all at once. You’re
a human being, too, so it’s not unreasonable to expect some non-work
activity now and then.

Your balancing act requires you to know what to juggle as well as
how. Sometimes you have to put something down, even temporarily,
so you don’t inadverdently drop something else. In a business sense this
is called outsourcing or, quite simply, “paying someone else for
your troubles.

When freelancers think of handing the reins to someone else, legal and
accounting are the first services that come to mind. Too many people stop
there, though. Consider other options:

payroll: you weren’t going to cut that W2 paycheck by yourself, were
you? Putting this in the hands of a payroll service offsets tax hassles,
including the legal risks thereof. Many payroll services will go beyond
cutting the actual check: quarterly tax forms; direct deposit; regular
recurring payments (salary); and annual W2 forms for your employee(s).

web and mail hosting: Yes, you’re technologically inclined. Yes,
you have home broadband. But do you have redundant hardware, power, and
internet connectivity to boot? (If you do, please give me a call. Let’s
make a deal.) Right now your clients won’t know you host your domain from
your living room; but they’ll find out the minute your connection (or
machine) drops out and the mail starts bouncing.

Let someone else take care of server upgrades and hardware maintenance.
Web hosting has has changed a lot in the past few years. Shop around and
you can land a full-service provider for under $20 per month. (That’s just
pennies a day!)

web site and logo design: A professional-looking site may not
necessarily land you clients, but one with that late-1990’s minimalism can
certainly turn them away. It’s worth the money to have someone else crank
out the eye candy while you focus on the content. (That would be
“information about Company X.”) If you’re familiar with web design, you
can hire someone to do just the logo and take care of the page design
yourself.

call services: Some firms make their money being your answering
service. These companies make sure your callers always talk to a human
being, even when you’re not around. This has the added bonus of making you
look like a large shop, which helps your company’s image.

travel: If any part of your commute takes place at cruising
altitude, consider letting someone else doing the legwork: finding flights,
managing hotel reservations, and arranging transportation can eat up a lot
of billable time. This also leaves someone else to hassle the airlines or
hotels when they do a less-than-stellar job.

tech support: this may be overkill for a solo shop; but a small
office may benefit from letting someone else handle their tech woes. (Your
computer vendor’s tech service may be helpful, but will they come on-site
on short notice?)

Chances are, the most you’d need is occasional phone service with an option
for occasional onsite visits. This goes beyond PC repair: a proper tech
support firm may also offer advice on setting up your local network,
recommend hardware, and take care of other details that really only concern
you when they don’t work.

You have to spend money to make money; and spending money on the above
services means you can focus on your own billing or, better yet, on
relaxing.