Running a business as a one-man band involves mastering a few different roles. This post explores some of the different hats you’ll need to wear as a solo business owner and how to handle these roles efficiently.
Marketer
To attract customers, you need to do your own marketing. This could include creating a website, running online adverts, posting on social media, sending marketing emails or hosting marketing events. Doing marketing research is essential to work out who your audience are and how to connect to them. A marketing course could meanwhile help teach various strategies.
Sales representative
Securing sales involves being a good sales rep. This could be more important in some industries than others – while you may not have to do much sales talk if you’re selling everyday low value items, a good pitch could be key to success when selling more high-value niche products and services. Consider whether taking a sales workshop is necessary.
Copywriter
A lot of writing is involved when running a business – including creating website content, creating contracts and sending emails to clients. Having a good level of written communication skills could be important for maintaining professionalism and winning over customers. AI may be able to help with many written tasks, but you still need to be able to personalize written content – so consider educating yourself on a few copywriting tips.
Accountant
Running a business involves a range of financial tasks including expense tracking, filing tax returns, sending invoices, paying staff, budgeting and financial forecasting. While accounting software has helped to make many of these tasks much easier, you still need a good level of financial literacy to do your accounting properly. This guide to self-employed accounting helps to outline some of the things you need to know as a small business owner.
IT specialist
Being able to deploy all the latest tech is essential for keeping up with competitors. This includes knowing how to set up hardware, how to fend off cyberattacks, how to analyse data and how to fix bugs. If you’re a technophobe, this could be something that you need to get over. This post delves more into the IT essentials every business needs.
Supply chain manager
You’ll also need to be responsible for ordering all the company’s supplies. This can be a lot more challenging than some people realise – especially if your company relies on many different supplies to function. If you’re running a coffee bar by yourself for example, you’ll need to keep stock of all your ingredients and equipment. If you’re repairing machines, you’ll need to shop around for parts like Schneider components yourself and find the best deals so that you can carry out repairs at reasonable rates. Using software to manage your supplies may help.
Should you get help?
Fortunately, you don’t have to run your business all by yourself. In fact, it’s actively encouraged that all business owners seek out some help. This allows you to focus on honing your core skills instead of trying to become a jack of all trades.
Outsourcing is one of the best ways in which businesses can seek help. This involves paying a third-party company to take over a task. It’s cheaper than hiring employees and you can access top tier talent from around the world. Commonly outsourced tasks include accounting, marketing, IT support, copywriting and sales.
Alternatively, you can hire in-house employees to take over roles. This is more expensive, however it allows you to hire specialists who are solely dedicated to your business and you can monitor more closely. Make sure to budget all the costs of hiring an employee and take your time to interview different candidates.
