I began that way—thinking that I had to have everything in order before I ‘opened my doors.’ I attempted to get everything in order. I didn’t want to appear unprepared and unknowing. How could I know that once I actually became a consultant, there would be so many supportive people who’d work with me to gain the needed information? And the order of using those need-to-know facts cannot be predicted.

I’m in my eighth year of consulting. It’s fun and hard. Fun because I love what I do and there’s so much more I want to! Hard because there are all those things that need to be done on a routine basis to stay in business—like bookkeeping, taxes, marketing, and more.

My advice? Hire specialized support functions. Do that sooner rather than later. You don’t necessarily need to hire employees. You can hire consultants and contractors. Do only what you want to do in your business. Leave the rest of the work to someone who enjoys and specializes in those activities. It generally takes us longer to do those things that we’d rather not, anyway. It takes the stress off right away. I know; I waited. Many of us do.

As with many Sole Proprietors and small business people, it took a while to make that happen. It seems not to matter whether you’re doing it yourself or have help. We all know why. It takes time. Time to decide what is our current highest priority offering. What do we want to say about it? How is it best sold on this internet medium vs in-person, by referrals, via advertising, and so on. There is a different approach for each case.

As Adam Urbanski says, “…if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly to start with.” (Sorry, Mom, I’m going with this new plan.) Something is better than nothing. Then we work on improvements as we go. Well, tell that to a copywriter, which I am, also. We love to edit and change. There’s always something more to make even more perfect. In this case, I needed to let go of that and ‘just do it’ for the outcome to happen.

I plan to write tips and articles and answer questions that you are welcome to submit. I love to share all that I learn so that others can use the same information to grow their business, too. I’ll refer to many of the resources from which I’ve learned over the years.

If you have ideas that you’d like to share with the KAS Marketing community, we welcome your comments.