By Dan Nedelko
The podcast currently has 28 episodes available.
I often hear in many different different business, the idea of building a team versus hiring a professional services provider and a trusted partner.
A few things to keep in mind:
In the world of small business ownership, every decision can have a significant impact on your success and bottom line.
One critical decision that often arises is whether to hire an employee or partner with professional services for various business needs. Let’s disect the scenario and look at both options.
Let’s start by considering the traditional route—hiring an employee. For many small to medium-sized businesses, hiring staff may seem like the natural progression to handle tasks like marketing, payroll, human resources, accounting, bookkeeping, and more.
Suppose you decide to hire a marketing manager with 2-3 years of experience. In December 2023, the average starting salary for such a position in Ontario is around $42,000 annually. This amount, however, is just the beginning of your financial commitment.
Recruiting the right employee can be a time-consuming and costly process. On average, it takes about 42 days to find the ideal candidate. During this period, resources are allocated to the recruitment process, adding up to approximately $4,129.
After hiring, the employee’s productivity typically remains low during the initial months. This period of onboarding and ramp-up can be conservatively estimated at one additional month’s salary, which is another $3,500.
Your employee will likely require paid time off, which typically includes two weeks of vacation and two weeks of sick leave. This adds an extra $3,500 to your yearly expenses.
Employers are responsible for payroll taxes, employee benefits, and contributions to health spending accounts (HSAs). Factoring these in, you’re looking at an additional $12,000 annually.
To equip your employee for success, you’ll need various software tools, such as CRM systems, project management tools, and design software. A conservative estimate for these expenses is $1,000 per month or $12,000 per year.
Summing up all these costs, the true cost of hiring one employee in this scenario comes to a staggering $84,649 annually, nearly double the initial salary.
Now, let’s shift our focus to the alternative—partnering with professional services. Instead of hiring an employee, you can collaborate with trusted partners who specialize in areas like marketing, payroll, human resources, accounting, bookkeeping, and more.
One significant advantage of partnering with professional services is cost predictability. You can typically negotiate a retainer fee, which remains consistent throughout the partnership, making it easier to budget and plan for your business expenses.
Professional service providers often have years of experience and a team of specialists at their disposal. They bring industry-specific knowledge, best practices, and a track record of success to your business.
When you work with professionals, there’s no need for an onboarding or ramp-up period. They’re ready to hit the ground running from day one, delivering immediate value to your business.
Partnering with professional services eliminates the need to worry about payroll taxes, benefits, or employee-related costs. You pay a fixed fee for their expertise, and they handle the rest.
By outsourcing non-core functions to professionals, you can focus on what you do best—growing your business and serving your clients.
In conclusion, while hiring an employee may seem like the obvious choice for small businesses, it’s essential to consider the hidden costs and complexities involved. Partnering with professional services offers cost predictability, expertise, and a streamlined approach to meeting your business needs.
The decision ultimately comes down to whether you want to take on the responsibilities and costs associated with hiring, or if you’d prefer to leverage the skills and experience of trusted professionals. In many cases, the latter proves to be the more efficient and cost-effective solution for small to medium-sized businesses, but that’s not always the case. There are no silver bullets.
When evaluating the true cost of hiring versus partnering, it’s clear that the value of professional services can far outweigh the expenses of hiring and maintaining an employee.
As small business owners and entrepreneurs, we should always be building a network of trusted advisors and service providers to help us navigate the challenges of growing our businesses.
What’s the difference between a Partner and a Service Provider as it applies to professional services? Specifically Digital Marketing or Software Development?
There are some major differences IMHO…let’s dive into it.
Partners are part of the process, involved in the conversations as they are developed. Partners are on the team and involved in the development of strategy. Pro tip: when you engage a partner, engage them in your desired outcome not in the task at hand. If you’ve got a good partner, then they’ll use their experience to work with you to achieve that outcome.
Service Providers are not distinctly part of the process. They’re valuable in their own way, but they are not strategic. Service providers provide a specific task, complete that task and move on to their next project.
Each type of professional service; whether it’s a partner or a service provider fulfills a specific need and one is only superior to the other within the context of the bigger picture.
The danger? In asking for a partner when in fact you really want a service provider. That can get messy for both sides of the equation.
Enjoy this “sort of” Transcript.
Introduction: In today’s episode of The Drive, Dan Nedelko dives into a crucial distinction that often gets overlooked in the business world: the difference between a partner and a service provider. He emphasizes the importance of choosing the right term because words matter, especially when it comes to defining the relationships within your service-based business.
Defining Partners and Service Providers: Dan starts by clarifying that the definitions of a partner and a service provider are worlds apart. Service providers are there to fulfill specific requests, complete tasks, and move on. On the other hand, partners engage in a more profound relationship, actively participating in the process, and sharing their expertise and experiences.
Digital Marketing: Dan delves into the realm of digital marketing and explains that distinguishing between a partner and a service provider is crucial. Partners should be deeply involved in the client’s internal dialog, helping them understand the intricacies of their strategies. While service providers fulfill tasks efficiently, they may not contribute to strategic discussions.
Software Development: Shifting gears to software development, Dan points out that the choice between a partner and a service provider depends on the client’s technical infrastructure and needs. If you need specialized technical skills, a service provider might be suitable. However, if you seek a comprehensive understanding of how technology aligns with your business goals, a software partner with a broader experience is essential.
The Power of Partnership: Dan underscores the value of partnerships, where both parties work collaboratively to achieve desired outcomes. Partners bring a wealth of experience and want to see your business succeed. When the partnership is genuine, it becomes a powerful force for growth.
Conclusion: In closing, Dan urges listeners not to confuse partners with service providers and warns against misusing the term “partner” when seeking specific services. He emphasizes that choosing the right word is essential, as it sets the tone for the relationship.
Final Thoughts: In the best-case scenario, a partnership is a true collaboration, while a service provider fulfills a specific task. As you navigate the world of business relationships, make sure you choose the right partner or service provider based on your unique needs and goals.
Outro: That’s it for today’s podcast. We hope you found this episode enlightening. Stay safe out there, and remember, words matter in defining your business relationships.
Welcome back to The Drive with me, Dan Nedelko. Join me to learn about Business and Growth for Small Business. It’s practical, snackable, pragmatic and hopefully helpful.
In this welcome back episode I’m explaining a bit about my perspective on Business and what value I can convey to you in the rejuventated verion of The Drive.
Join me and I’ll be talking about:
Thanks for being here. Remember: you know more than you realize.
I’ve decided to resurrect my podcast in order to be more relevant to a wider audience, in addition to it being easier and more convenient for me to record a short ten to fifteen minutes podcast on my drive into the office every morning.
I’m anticipating that it will be a podcast full of tips, anecdotes, gripes, strategies, tactics and techniques that I’ve used over the years and in my day to day adventures in the world of startups and marketing.
If you know me then you’ll know that I have a number of concurrent projects happening all of the time. The concept of the “lean startup” is not new to me. It’s actually called bootstrapping, or, “starting up without any money” – this concept is as old as commerce itself.
For some reason it’s the new rage in the world of technology startups, so I’ll refer a bit to that audience but in reality this should be useful for any entrepreneur, small business owner or marketing/business professional making their way in this new digital economy that has developed.
Episode 1: Planning for marketing versus a marketing plan.
I cover why a marketing plan written in stone will do you no good at all, especially when you’re moving quickly and defining your product or service. I give up a process I’ve used successfully dozens of times in both the online and offline business worlds.
Click the play button to get started, and please forgive the noise, I really am driving while I recorded this!
As we wrap 2016, it’s a good time to look back and reflect on the fact that there have been more updates in the past year in terms of SEO, Google, Facebook, Twitter than the past 3 years combined, all which affect how we market and do business on the internet.
In today’s Marketing Drive we’re not talking about the 2017 trends but rather the 2016 changes and how that will affect how we think about our activity in the digital marketing industry. These are my personal observations from my day to day work and client work that span these different digital marketing platforms.
2016 has been a great year for Honeypot Marketing, thanks to everyone for subscribing to The Marketing Drive YouTube channel and podcast. Happy New Year!
In The Marketing Drive Episode 22 we’re talking about:
Video Transcription
Welcome to the marketing drive. I’m Dan Nedelko and it is the end of the year. On today’s marketing drive I wanted to talk a little bit about, not trends because I don’t like the word trends. But for 2016 especially, in the world of digital marketing, there has been full of changes this particular year from my observations.
Working day to day in digital marketing on client work, our own projects, using all of the different channels in the platforms that we use, this year has seen some really substantial changes. Now you can probably look back every single year and say the same thing but I feel that this year there was a huge maturity that happened on a lot of social media platform.
1.Google
Starting with the big ‘G’, Google introduced the caffeine platform. I’m probably going to miss a couple of these milestones, such as Penguin 3 and Penguin 4, but I think how I’m going to hit on the generalities of it. So we saw the caffeine platform which really underpins Google’s infrastructure roll-out and that really put an end to your “google update”. Since that happens now in almost real time, those rankings move around.
There are thousands of thousands of PageRank algorithm updates that happen. They’ve said over a thousand, so I actually would trust that would be the case given the size and scale of the search engine itself, and the number of people working on it and the platform is running on.
What I would say is very effectively and I have been involved with a number of projects who you know we’re living in a state of denial about what penguin means? Why is content important? Why SEO and just site development best practices are extremely important? And they got penalized for it. A lot of old-world thinking about what content means? Is content important for the user? Which it absolutely is and the holistic approach of SEO which I think is often forgotten.
So that’s google, it’s going to be mobile – mobile first, mobile app development, search optimization in app. So iTunes Store, Google Play, taking into account that google now has google pixel which is going to be a probably a rising kind of star for google, but again just on the mobile front is really tailoring a mobile experience primarily rather than secondarily, and moving into the app development space, and really understanding when you design pages specifically on your site whether they’re lead acquisition pages or information pages or anchor pages, the device is important for the layout of your content and how people interact with that.
Obviously, screen size is a massive issue. Smaller screen sizes should have content tailored for people and understanding how people use devices. When you’re mobile you’re typically on-the-go. You’re not going to read a five-page document right. You may watch a video it needs to be scan-able all of those types of things.
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Snapchat
Continue to double down on the vertical video world and continue to expand to the millennial crowd. I think we are going to see a lot more brands and brand engaging stories and I’m hoping Snap will work n their distribution model for smaller and medium size businesses to make it worth it for them in interact there.You’re also going to see Snapchat introduces features that will allow the brand to interact and schedule content on snap channels would be a very welcome thing.
5. Bing and Yahoo
I’m not entirely sure. Your going to see Bing with the maturity of Windows 10 and Xbox
In summary:
Again, no trends! These are my observations that I think you will see happen in 2017 in a real tactile way. Happy New Year and happy 2017. It’s been a fascinating and great year at Honeypot Marketing. You’re going to see the introduction to the Knows Network and I’m super excited about that. We are going to start doubling down on our own projects and community.
Subscribe to The Marketing Drive YouTube channel
I’ll be covering the latest and greatest marketing, business and start-up tips every day from the road.
Agency Life: http://dnedprod.wpengine.com
The ups, the downs of agency life. How to build your agency successfully.
Marketing Execution: http://honeypotmarketing.com
Every day we’re launching, reviewing and optimizing marketing campaigns.
Marketing and Business: http://marketerknows.com
How to survive as an effective marketer without losing your sanity. Marketer Knows is a community for marketers who are in the trenches each and every day.
Paying to market your core product or service through Google AdWords, Facebook or Bing (or any other paid channel) will be an extremely expensive proposition.
Watch and learn how to reduce your Pay Per Click campaign costs, create a highly engaged lead list and increase your conversion and retention rates.
Sound too good to be true? It isn’t, it simply requires an understanding of how a lead and conversion list can be set up to reduce costs and increase your long term conversions.
The best part of this? You’ll be investing a lead list your can segment and develop relationships with your potential clients over the long term.
In The Marketing Drive Episode 21 we’re talking about:
Subscribe to The Marketing Drive YouTube channel
I’ll be covering the latest and greatest marketing, business and start-up tips every day from the road.
Agency Life: http://dnedprod.wpengine.com
The ups, the downs of agency life. How to build your agency successfully.
Marketing Execution: http://honeypotmarketing.com
Every day we’re launching, reviewing and optimizing marketing campaigns.
Marketing and Business: http://marketerknows.com
How to survive as an effective marketer without losing your sanity. Marketer Knows is a community for marketers who are in the trenches each and every day.
AdWords is the world’s most advanced and largest network for publishers and an extremely powerful demand-side platform (DSP). If you’re a digital marketing professional managing advertising inventory then this will be a great use of 8 minutes of your day!
In today’s Marketing Drive we’re talking about AdWords Quality Score, why it’s important for all marketers from the highest executive levels to the most junior intern to understand the importance of this score.
Your Finance team and your year-end budget actuals versis forecasts will thank you for being thoughtful about your digital marketing messaging quality.
In The Marketing Drive Episode 20 we’re talking about:
Subscribe to The Marketing Drive YouTube channel
I’ll be covering the latest and greatest marketing, business and start-up tips every day from the road.
Agency Life: http://dnedprod.wpengine.com
The ups, the downs of agency life. How to build your agency successfully.
Marketing Execution: http://honeypotmarketing.com
Every day we’re launching, reviewing and optimizing marketing campaigns.
Marketing and Business: http://marketerknows.com
How to survive as an effective marketer without losing your sanity. Marketer Knows is a community for marketers who are in the trenches each and every day.
The podcast currently has 28 episodes available.