What and when I outsource my work as a solopreneur
In the last 14 years, I worked as a software engineer in several tech companies and recently I quit my job and started my own company. During those years on the technical level, I mostly did it in my way, and I think it was a good way since the products I worked on did well in the technical aspects.
I wanted to contribute to the product and marketing, but my suggestions in those fields were not welcome as much as in the technical path.
By becoming a single founder, I got a lot of freedom to do what I want, and product and marketing are a big part of it.
I'm working on a business goal management app for small business owners. I have a vision of how it should look and feel, but I also assume there are ten other ideas on how it should look and feel with ten different readers.
My unique vision on how it should look, how it should behave, and how to describe and explain my product reside only in the head, so it doesn't make sense to ask the designer to design something from scratch.
So after I did build some of the screens and I wasn't happy with the result, I asked a designer to take my existing screens and refine them, it went great, the designer did his magic, and now it's looking much better than before but still not in the way I vision it. I don't regret any moment I spent on the design by myself. Without that effort, I wasn't so pleased with the result.
In the marketing field, from the beginning, I took consulting that helped to build the marketing funnels. This work will be the same for almost all companies. Hence, with that help, I do the technical work of marketing much faster and better.
For now, I do the copywriting of the site, the blog posts and the social network posts, and the choice of the marketing channels I do and decide since again this is my vision to the product so I can explain it the best.
It will be down the line that I'll outsource those parts since getting help with that will be after the tone and voice of the marketing will become solid as mine tone and voice.
On the other hand, I will always outsource things like legal since there is no unique thing I can bring to the table.
I'm probably making many mistakes with design, copy, and marketing, and hopefully, I'll learn from them and change my mind about how it should look and feel.
Founding a new software company is hard enough. If I want to enjoy the ride, it must be in my way, even if my path will change along the ride.
I am facing the exact same problems and sometimes feelings. also similar career path.
I took a slightly different approach - I use some freelance money to hire another dev to do things I like to do less and boost the process of building.
This allows me more time to focus on the big picture: marketing, business model etc.
Hopefully future would show I am right on doing this :)
Thank you for sharing !
Before everything, I love to code, so I think that the last thing I'll stop doing is code.
Thanks and good luck.
Me too, but i find this balance more suitable for me.
But sure - everyone with what suits him best :)
Best of luck!
Hi Ronen,
I feel you. Let me try to point you in the right direction.
First of all, copywriting, designing, and marketing are specialties that need some background studies, proper testing, and if you have too much on your plate you cannot learn all these things to point your brand in the right direction. You might need experts to help guide you.
I don't suggest you do all of that yourself if you are not the expert in those areas. I think many people lose a lot of money because of this. It's better if you hire an agency that has all of this to take care of your pains. Not only experts, but experience to manage different brands in order to test what works or not, you're just doing one, and that's a disadvantage for you. You only have your business idea.
Marketing is A LOT. From social media channels, strategies, target persona, a bunch of stuff you need to take into account.
This is why I founded my company in the first place.
I see many entrepreneurs doing this, trying to do everything by themselves of hiring different freelancers out there to create the website, another freelancer for the copy, and so on without proper guidance. This is like going to Lego, Hasbro, and Barbie to create a doll for you, how do you think this will end?
Entrepreneurs have many ideas, and I did back then–I mean I have a bunch of them–but you need people who take their time to understand your business and vision, view a few examples, and see what you're after.
Branding is the first thing you have to do after you have tested your MVP, that way you'll define the voice of your brand that will be on your website talking to the right audience. That's the glue for your entire business.
My question here is, have you launched an MVP of this product to test your idea and the need for this? Or are you going all in without testing this phase?
If you need any help or guidance, I'm open to chatting.
Have a great day!
First, thanks a lot for the feedback.
I don't say that I will do a better job than a professional marketer/copywriter/designer or any other crucial professional for a successful business.
I say that I have my vision of how it should look, feel, and how to explain the product. If I had the option to hire a full time in any of those roles, I would do it, but it's not the case.
I think that to delegate the whole marketing or design or copy to consulting even after 1 or 2 hours of talking with them is not optimal, and a better way to do it is to ask for help in specific things.
The best way (IMO) to do it is first to try by myself, then, when needed, ask for specific help from professional consulting.
There are other things like building the campaigns in the social media channels or with legal docs. I took help with it since my vision doesn't play any role in those things.
I didn't finish my MVP yet, it should happen in a couple of weeks, and I'll be happy to ask you to use it and give your feedback.
Meanwhile, I showed several friends screenshots and got some feedback. I plan to onboard them first to get feedback on the actual product.
again, thanks for the feedback
Yes, sure! Count me in!
Consulting will help you a lot! That's something I recommend, so go ahead if you have the budget for it.
I understand why you feel this way. As a solo entrepreneur you have complete ownership and a strong emotional connection to the project. But if your goal is to make money from it, your vision isn't as important as your potential customers' response to it.
Have you heard the saying, a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. Well the same can be said for specialty areas of a business.
In terms of copy, especially, being so close to the product has a big downside due to the curse of knowledge. It's always harder to write effectively for your own stuff, even if you do have expertise and training in the craft. And if you don't have that, it's next to impossible to do successfully.
Best of luck.
There is a significant difference between coming up with an idea to copy and asking the copywriter to polish it and asking the copywriter what I should write.
I prefer the first approach.
At first, I'll do a scrappy job. Later, when I think it is a good time, I'll ask a copywriter to help to publish my messaging
There's also a significant difference in the value you'll receive between those two. In fact, you don't need a copywriter for the one you prefer; you need a copyeditor. Copywriting is about more than just wordsmithing. Nailing the messaging is the most important part, especially for conversion-focused components.
It's a little like saying instead of hiring a chef to prepare a meal, you're going to cook something yourself and then have a chef polish it up before serving it. Which meal do you think will be better?
For Retroteam https://retroteam.app/ I outsourced a good portion of my marketing so I could focus on what am great at. Writing code and delighting my users by laser focus on talking to them and ensuring that I understand what they want and building that.
Although I could have done the marketing myself but I felt like the best use of my time was to deep dive into the code and user exploration.
I do understand and see why writing blogs in your own voice can be more autnetice but if you find a really good writer, they will do good research and chat with you about what your needs are. You will be blown away on how accurate they are to mimicking your voice and ideas. Sometimes it takes working with a number of bloggers and writers to find the right one but when you do, it pays off in multiple folds.
I still do some of my writing but I am finding it more and more to outsource and focus my energy on what drives the business and where I can bring value.
Find ways to multiply yourself, this is where true leadership lies. Goodluck....
First, I must say after looking at your home page that I have a bunch of questions for you regarding it.
To estimate what is your tone and to be able to evaluate the quality of the work of the writers, I think you must have some experience with writing so you can see what is better, and then you will be better at managing those process
I do have some experience in writing but I wouldn’t say am good at it. I can say the more you write the better you get at it but I have read lots of articles and I know the space very well.
So picking a good writer would naturally happen while looking at their work.
How do you go about automating marketing? A lot of the things like cold sales emails, finding influencers, getting their emails, negotiating for posts, outreach and PR are primarily done by people - but I wondered, there must be a better way to automate this process and make it more efficient for people who don't want to hire extra members on their team.
I am sure that you can find consulting or even products that will help you with this.
I saw a tip (it was regarding code by Daniel Terhorst-North) that said don't automate anything until you are sure that you know the process that you automate since you might lose a lot of learning with the automation.
I try to apply this advice also in other fields besides code.
I recommend getting your customers to pre-pay before you code
In my experience, I did everything myself (0 outsource) and ended up getting 40 paying customers in 2 months.
I lazor focused on interviewing customers (Free), onboarding them into paid customers (Free), and I didn't even have a landing page until I had 50 paying customers.
I didn't have legal. I didn't have design. I didn't have screens. I had 1 copy I used to recruit customers I'd post around in groups.
I def recommend getting your customers to pre-pay before you code/design ANYTHING!! EG: If your hair is on fire, and someone asks if you would pay $20 for a fire extinguisher, the answer is YES. They don't need to code it, or design it, and the fire extinguisher may not even exist, ... you'd just pay. And that validates the problem.
Those are great numbers you have.
Out of curiosity, how long has it taken you to build your product? I am collecting now emails and feel bad that I have not shipped the product yet, get prepayment will put a lot of pressure on me
What's the nature of your business?
All the very best for journey! :)
Thanks!
Welcome
Hi Ronen.
I am the founder of both researchai.co and agavente.com.
We write founder-level amazing blog posts for startups. Would love to write the first blog for free if you are interested in trying it out.
Thanks a lot for the generous offer. At my stage, I still prefer to write the content by myself. Later in the ride, it might be relevant