Even as a Solo Entrepreneur, Doing Everything Yourself Is a No-Go. Use Skill-Sharing Sites to Secure Your Time

I work and work, yet...

Right after starting a business, you tend to think "I'll do everything myself, spending as little money as possible."
Of course, that policy isn't bad in the sense of getting to know your business well, but you have only one body and only 24 hours in a day.

If you're so swamped with work that you hardly have any days or time off, you need to narrow down the work you should do.

What should you really be doing?

An entrepreneur has only two jobs

Peter Drucker, the greatest management scholar, said, "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two — and only two — basic functions: marketing and innovation; everything else is a cost."

A company is, so to speak, your alter ego, so following Drucker's words, your job as an entrepreneur is only "marketing and innovation."

Roughly speaking, marketing is "making selling unnecessary by building a system that makes things sell."
Put the same way, innovation is "creating new value (usually planning products and services)."

In the extreme, anything other than generating marketing and innovation is work you don't need to do.

For example, in running a store, you don't need to handle the opening preparations, cleaning, and customer service yourself, or produce the web pages yourself (though customer service is well worth doing if your aim is to understand your customers...).

For a consultant or sales writer, accounting and page design fall into this category.

Don't you think outsourcing costs a lot of money?

It's better to have so-called "tasks" done by part-timers or employees, or to outsource them.

You may be thinking along those lines.

But in fact, outsourcing has become overwhelmingly more affordable than before.
What makes this possible is the recently flourishing "skill-sharing services."

What are skill-sharing services?

Skill-sharing services are a form of C2C (peer-to-peer) sharing economy.

According to "Overview of Trends in Skill-Sharing Services | March 22, 2018 (Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting)," the sharing economy is defined as "economic revitalization activity in which assets and the like that individuals possess and can utilize (including intangible things such as skills and time) are made available to other individuals through matching platforms on the internet."

You may know flea-market services like Mercari, car sharing like Uber, and home sharing like Airbnb. This is the knowledge-and-skills version of those.

What skill-sharing services are there?

Zehitomo

This is a recently launched skill-sharing service run by a foreign-affiliated company: Zehitomo. In terms of its lineup of skills, school-like offerings for hobbies and health stand out more than business, but home services (cleaning and renovation) and business (from tax accountants and English interpreters to snow-shoveling services) look very useful for saving time.

ANYTIMES

ANYTIMES, unlike the skill-sharing services above, bills itself as connecting "people who want to receive life-related services and people who want to provide them." In fact, looking at the categories, many genres relate to housework.

Housework is something everyone needs, but naturally it isn't necessary work for an entrepreneur.
So using housekeeping services to free up time is perfectly fine.

Also, whether they'll take it on would need to be discussed, but store operations need cleaning and tidying too, so you may be able to use it that way.

TIME TICKET

TIME TICKET is a skill-sharing service with a strong element of teaching know-how and consulting, rather than doing tasks for you.

I've bought tickets for a consultation with a company president, an introduction to a president's connections, know-how for earning with no risk, and photo shoots. All of them were very satisfying.

Outsourcing (skill-sharing services) is an investment

Outsourcing (skill-sharing services) is for freeing up time for you to focus on marketing and innovation. In other words, you buy the finite resource of time with money — that is, it's an investment.

Accept it as something necessary for your business's growth, and pay up gracefully.

Also, the providers on skill-sharing services are professionals in their fields, not mere subcontractors. You'll want to show respect for their willingness to take on the work and deal with them pleasantly.