If you’re a CEO, general manager, entrepreneur, or anyone else responsible for running a business with a lot on your plate, then you know you can’t possibly do everything yourself and still do it well.

Somethings will inevitably get outsourced: you hire an account manager, or an admin assistant, or a part-time accountant. Typically, it’s the things we dislike doing or the things we absolutely can’t get wrong (like accounting) that come off our plates first. And in this growing gig-economy, there are THOUSANDS of people online waiting for you to give them work, often for much cheaper than what it would be for you to bring someone into the office on a full-time basis.

But there’s a catch (sometimes).

When you’re outsourcing work, regardless of whether you’re hiring an external firm, a consultant, or a freelancer who lives on the other side of the country, you want to be diligent and make sure you are hiring the right person for the job.

You wouldn’t expect your IT Director to make sales, right?

Before you hire someone, be sure you clearly understand what it is that you need help with. What is the end goal you’re looking for? Do you want to generate more leads for your Sales team? Do you need a new website, or just new web copy? Do you need an accountant, or someone to do data-entry?

There is a boom happening of the “Jack of All Trades” – i.e., someone who can handle everything you throw at them: from managing inboxes, to social media, to graphic design, to sales. But as the saying goes: Jack of all Trades, Master of None. If you’re going to be paying someone to manage your social media for you, doesn’t it make sense that you hire a social media expert? When we hire for internal positions, this seems to be incredibly clear, but the concept seems to get lost when we start to look outside of our company. The result is that you’re paying for work to get done that may not generate results for your company.

And if it doesn’t generate results, then why bother paying for it? In the end, you want to be sure you’re generating real value for your business by hiring someone who can do it (whatever “it” happens to be in your case) better than what you can.

At Blue Whale, we’re experts in writing and storytelling. We’re experts in helping your customers understand your business, what your values are, your brand story, and why they should work with you and not Joe down the road. Because we’re experts in telling your story to your target audience, how “it” looks is different every time. For some clients, we write web copy. For some, we write for and manage social media content to engage with audiences. Other times we blog and help drive traffic to websites, creating new leads. Heck, we even research for and write case studies! But the underlying thread is: no matter what we’re writing for you and what story we’re telling, it will be top quality and earn you the results you’re looking for.