Ok, so we've covered a lot. You are familiar with all of the content you create, have an efficient batch work schedule, and have put systems and automation in place. You are THRIVING! Right? Or at least trying, like we are.

But, it's still just too much for one (or two, in our case) people. From the 100's of hours and 1000's of dollars we've spent learning about business, one thing is clear: you have to be willing to outsource parts of your business if you want to grow and make money (which is kind of the point).

And yeah, we're going to echo the age-old saying: You have to spend money to make money.

It's ok to start small. Baby steps still move us forward, remember? Here are some suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Hire an intern (if your business is an LLC this is super easy), a photographer, or mentor with someone who has a business like yours. Hire someone to design a logo or develop a brand guide. Even better - trade someone that needs YOUR services and you need theirs.* If it's mutually beneficial, collaborate. If it's not, SEE YA!

*Never trade with someone for IG posts or any BS like that. Sorry, not sorry. I was a freelance photographer for years and got asked to trade for the craziest things. We're all running businesses, and if the trade isn't a mutually beneficial -- you're using people.

So let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Here are the things we currently outsource and why:

Pinterest: We hired someone to take a Pinterest course and held a meeting afterwards where he gave us a strategy and best practices to implement. This person will also run our Pinterest ads for us once we go down that road. Worth every penny.

Why? We couldn't put everything on pause to take a 2 week long Pinterest course. It was worth investing in someone who could take the course, train us in one hour, and help us to strategize with paid ads down the road.

Website Maintenance: This is by far the best investment we've made. Anytime we need content uploaded, find a glitch on the website, or have a new improvement that we want to make at backdropstock.com, we have someone we can reach out to immediately (on Slack).

Why? My sister designed our website (Margo & Bert - and yeah that's our stock!). They are so freaking talented and generous, but they are also family, and we didn't want to overwhelm them with the ins and outs of our business. So now we have this awesome person that we can contact anytime and they always get the job done quickly and take a huge load of stress off.

Quotes and Mock-ups: We have a designer who designs assets for us each month with our stock photos. She's awesome and delivers them in three sizes so that we can use them across all of our platforms (Newsletter, IG, IG stories, website, Pinterest, and eventually in ads).

New here? Hi! We're a mother-daughter team and we dreamed up this thing. Check our our background stock photos here and sign up for our newsletter to get a freebie every month, plus interviews with talented graphic designers and business owners.

Why? Two main reasons. Fist, being able to use them far beyond Instagram makes it worth the investment. Second, we are not designers and are marketing partially to designers. Our stock needs to look amazing and it will only look amazing if we hire a professional to do the job right.

Newsletter: We have a contract with a marketing specialist who drafts, designs, and sends out our newsletter. She also does all of the email communication for our interviews that go in our newsletter and on the blog/Pinterest, which is super helpful because that can take a lot of time.

Why? Again, we are not designers and we want to be professional, so we hire the professionals to appeal to our ideal customer. Our ideal customer cares about how our newsletters look. Also, tbh newsletters can be a big time suck but they're super freaking important. Your email list is the only list YOU own - so if IG dies, your people are still with you. So if you can, hire it out.

Other Content: We hire out other content as needed. Specifically to hype up and launch new collections (examples: collages, triptychs, photos of us).

Why? We want to support designers and artists. We can do that by hiring them intermittently as we need their assistance. We also want to keep things super fun and never want you to expect anything - always wonder what's next. Hiring others who have their own vision helps keep things fresh.

Like what you see? Check our our background stock photos here and sign up for our newsletter to get a freebie every month, plus interviews with talented graphic designers and business owners. Because we love you.