Owning a small business is like having a child, you want to nurture it and do what is best for it. At Kuvio, we feel this way and one of the biggest struggles we have is when to do things ourselves and when to hire an expert. For example, we still do our own taxes but we recently hired a lawyer to take over creating our contracts. How do we make decisions like this? How do we know when to invest in an expert and when to save some cash and get it done on our own. We have come up with a list of questions we ask ourselves and today we thought we would share it in case it can help someone else.

1. Do we know how to do it?

2. Is there anyone on our team who has knowledge of this task?

3. What are the time and resources required to learn how to do this task?

4. How will the quality compare if we do it ourselves vs. hiring someone else?

5. How much money would we save by choosing the DIY approach considering the cost of our time?

6. How much time is a team member going to spend on this? Do they have the space in their role?

7. What are the costs of DIY vs. an expert?

8. What are the total costs of having someone learn and do this? 

9. What are the costs of hiring someone?  In both the short and long term?

10. What will the investment lead to?

11. What are the payoffs? 

12. Can we do without this thing? 

13. Does it need to be perfect or will “good enough” get us by?

14. Is this a one time project or something that is ongoing? Will we run into this issue again? 

15. We will need a long-term relationship with an expert or is this a one-off?

16. Is it time to grow our team? Are members of our team being spread too thin as our operation expands? 

17. How does this task relate to our goals?

18. If we do use an expert, what is the process to find one we trust? What will the consultation process be like? What questions do we need to ask?

19. Do we have an idea of what a fair price is? 

At Kuvio, we are the experts in web design, development, and branding, but we have learned to trust our clients’ expertise in their industry when we collaborate with them on a project. We have also found that certain tasks of running a company should be left up to the professionals. These questions serve as a framework we use to make these sometimes tough decisions and hopefully they help you too! Have questions or other ideas? Let us know on Twitter, @KuvioCreative.

Kuvio Creative is an innovative web design and development agency that finds solutions to our clients’ most difficult problems. Interested in learning more? Contact us today: www.kuv.io/contact.