VENTEUR spoke with Jordan Bell, CEO of Agency Bell, about outsourcing for startups. Agency Bell is a digital advertising agency that uses machine learning to power its operations. Bell is recognized as an advertising, digital agency, automation, and entrepreneurship expert. He has founded and launched several successful companies, consulted or advised startups in numerous industries, and managed hundreds of millions of dollars in digital campaigns for Fortune-level companies. Bell was recently featured as a Coach and Judge on Season 4 of "The Blox" (a reality competition for entrepreneurs). In addition, he has trained thousands of business professionals and students at UCLA, Cal Arts, General Assembly, and more.
Startup founders should consider outsourcing tasks that are NOT strategically important to their organization but ARE still operationally necessary.
Most functions that meet this criterion are commoditized or standardized enough to be delegated to specialists or SaaS.
For instance, hiring an outsourced payroll specialist or using out-of-box payroll management software is an excellent choice for many businesses with strategies unique to their niche.
Startup founders should retain (and not outsource) strategic and operationally essential tasks to their organization.
Finding adequate replacements and long-term solutions for the most strategically aligned skills takes a lot of work. It's also significantly more time-consuming to retrain for these strategically essential skills.
But outsourced work has a much higher risk for turnover.
In addition, a contractor's commitment is usually not enough to justify the deep level of work product that is truly "strategic" enough for the startup's standards.
This is especially true when the startup and founder have developed a competitive advantage.
When founders want to outsource specific tasks or projects, they should follow these steps:
When outsourcing tasks or projects, founders can reduce uncertainty by setting objectively clear guidelines for what the requirements for the job are and the style or standards for the final deliverable.
This is to reduce the variable nature of what work gets turned in.
In addition, since the contractor may not have worked as long at the company as employees (or has been as committed), the contractor is less likely to have the same intuitive and foundational knowledge for the tasks assigned.
Founders should ask these questions to contractors they're considering hiring:
All workers have unique methods of completing their tasks, and contractors are no different. By better understanding how that contractor best receives and performs duties, founders will typically get better long-term results by collaborating this way.
It's essential that the contractor can competently connect their work to the tasks assigned and show they have the skills and experience.
This creates an "agreement" to which the contractor can be held accountable.
