To succeed, a Business doesn’t need technical nor finance nor sales nor marketing nor customer support skills and competencies. 

It doesn’t even need a physical location. 

But it does need one thing.  

To illustrate, picture in your mind’s eye what you see when you think about a business.  

For most of us that vision starts with the entrepreneur.

That hard working and so inspirational individual that stakes their life to start, build, lead a company.

One company.

At one physical location where he or she manages and works alongside a small team of employees who also work only for that one company.

Now, of course there are elements of this traditional structure that are completely optimal.

First and foremost is the primacy it rightly places on the entrepreneur, and upon their creative force and perseverance as the beating heart of a dynamic and innovative business.  

And its simpleness and leanness empowers the kind of highly functional small teams that are the most efficient builders of big and great things. 

But beyond this, when it comes to how a business should be structured and organized, or whether that entrepreneur and his or her team should focus on one, or multiple businesses... 

...anything goes.

Because the ability to “outsource and fractionalize” every and any business work process is now not just not possible, but is a best practice.

Starting with technical processes and projects - like software and app development, web design, IT systems and the like. 

For the vast majority of businesses it would actually be strange and anachronistic to even attempt these kinds of projects “in-house,” versus via outsourced service providers (either domestic or overseas).

Now from outsourcing technical projects, it is a small jump to outsourcing traditionally in-house functions like finance and sales.

Bookkeeping and accounting have been been outsourced forever, but in the last few years the popularity and effectiveness of outsourced and virtual CFO and finance advisory services like Tatum, SuperCFO, and the Newport Board Group has grown significantly. 

And the same is true for sales, as proliferating are not just purveyors of "lead generation" and “appointment setting” services, but also companies that will not only identify and set prospect appointments, but close them for us too! 

The same goes for customer service and product fulfillment, and though still idiosyncratic and difficult to do well, for marketing and branding as well.

So if a business doesn't need technical nor finance nor sales nor marketing nor customer support in-house, then what does it need?

Well, it doesn’t need a physical location, which of course can also be outsourced.  

In the form of shared fulfillment, or co-working office space, and just via the all-powerful smartphone, which allows us all to work anytime from anywhere, on pretty much everything.

How about a firm’s culture and its strategy?

Of course  there are phenomenal consultants in these domains as well, and “fractionalizing” high-end business functions like these allows them to be completed at a far higher level of sophistication than when done in-house. 

Ok, well how about organizing and managing all of these outsourcers? 

That has to be done in-house, does it not?  

Not really, as there are business “wedding planners,” individuals and firms that hire themselves out as organizers and managers of all of a firm’s outsourced service providers and partners. 

So yes almost any business function can be outsourced. 

Almost. 

Because there is one extremely important business thing that can’t now nor ever be outsourced. 

That one thing that comes back to why entrepreneurs do and must exist in the first place. 

Motive force. 

Or to say it another way, entrepreneurial will and desire. 

Great entrepreneurs will always be needed to provide this magic element to get the whole engine started. 

And then to channel that will and desire into problem-solving excellence to grow either one business, a handful, or many dozens of them.

Started and grown serially, or increasingly so all at the same time. 

The trick is to not get ourselves so consumed by “the noise” that our motive force gets distracted and dissipated attempting to solve problems that could and should be more easily and cheaply solved by someone else.  

Outsourcing and the fractionalization of work makes this enticingly and excitedly possible. 

But only entrepreneurial motive force makes it real.

Is your business too “traditional?”  

Is it not utilizing the power of outsourcing to increase sales and reduce costs?  

Is it not generating the kinds of profits that attract to it business suitors of all types?

Are you unable to pursue multiple business opportunities at once?  

Have a key business initiative you would like some fresh ideas on how to get done?

If any of these describe your current situation, then complete this short questionnaire and we’ll reach out with our thoughts to help you.

read more