If you’ve been an entrepreneur for a while, you already know that running your own business is a solitary experience.

Sure, there are clients, colleagues, suppliers and employees around you, but being the person in charge puts you in unique, and therefore isolated, position.

Quite literally, you ARE your business.

No one is going to hold your hand through the tough times (and there will be tough times).

No one is going to make sure the work gets done, and gets done to your high standards, unless you step in.

When things don’t go according to plan, it’s all on your shoulders.

When you become an entrepreneur, you need to quickly learn how to be self-assured, self-motivated, and self-disciplined.

Self, self, self.

Get it?

That’s a lot of pressure for any person to have to endure. Sooner or later, things will get too heavy and you will need to ask for help.

Smart entrepreneurs know that surrounding themselves with an expert and reliable team of professionals to maintain the day-to-day grievances of running a business is the key to making sure operations run smoothly and sustainably.

So, while entrepreneurship can be a solitary experience, you will find it beneficial and practical to leverage a support team as much as possible.

Here are just a few types of support that smart business owners seek out…

Business Support

Every business owner needs a business coach or a business advisor.

Unfortunately, having a business advisor is often perceived as a negative thing. But, this type of thinking is deeply flawed.

Having a business coach doesn’t mean you are bad at running a business – it means you want to get better and better.

Many entrepreneurs start their own businesses because they are very good at providing a much sought-after product or service, but they are not necessarily great at running a business.

Having to make the shift from being an employee to a business owner comes as quite a shock to the system for many new entrepreneurs.

If you don’t make the transition from employee to business owner, both in mindset and practice, you will find it challenging to scale your business so that it can grow.

A business coach or advisor can teach you the best practices that are needed to run your business in such a way so that you can reach your business goals, whatever they may be.

Ideally, your business coach is someone with experience growing many businesses, not just someone with a business degree or training diploma.

While they can’t tell you specifically how to do your job or create your product (you already know how to do that anyway), they will have the unbiased perspective and business knowledge to let you know where you need to focus and grow, and what resources you can reach out to.

They can help you come up with plans of action that – based on their experience – will yield profitable and worthwhile results. They will help you break down these business plans into actionable steps, set deadlines, and then hold you accountable to following these steps towards reaching your goals.

A great business coach will be able to encourage you when you feel overwhelmed, keep things in perspective, and help build your self-confidence as a business owner.

Business advisors are also experts at identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and showing you how to work with or around them.

A great business advisor not only helps you grow your business, but they will help you grow into the person you need to become in order to run the business of your dreams.

Accounting Support

Accounting is much more than just filing your taxes (although for some of us, that’s challenging enough).

A good accountant will be able to inform you if it is worth your while to incorporate or operate as a sole proprietorship.

This is an important business decision, with many deciding factors, and should not be taken lightly.

While it might seem to make sense to learn how to do everything yourself, you will quickly find you will never be able to know as much or perform the tasks as quickly as a specialist in this field.

At some point, it is best practice to hand the reins over to someone who knows the job on a deeper level.

Also, consider the consequences should you make an innocent mistake. Will you have to re-file your taxes? Will you have to pay a penalty because you incorrectly calculated something?

Always remember to take into account the cost of your piece of mind when you factor in the cost of outsourcing to an accounting professional.

Legal Support

At first, you might not feel like you will need legal support to run your business.

However, if you require contracts, copyrights, patents, non-disclosure agreements, or clearances of any kind, you may want to consider enlisting the help of a legal professional.

Legal fees can quickly add up, but often times, you will not need to hire a full-time lawyer. Sometimes, a legal service (such as Legal Shield) will more than suffice for your particular situation.

Technical Support

If your business relies on technology – and these days, that’s pretty much a given – you will want reliable and trustworthy tech support.

Technical support often isn’t appreciated until something terrible happens, such as when a hard drive with important data crashes, or a network required for operations shuts down.

A good technical support team will not only help you prevent mishaps, but they will maintain and replace your technology so that your business is always operating at an optimum pace.

Administrative Support

Administrative support is often overlooked, because it is often seen as something that we, as business owners, can easily do ourselves.

While this may or may not be true, handling administrative tasks is not always an intelligent way to run your business.

Getting bogged down in administrative tasks is a surefire way to get misguided and trapped into working “in your business” as opposed to “on your business”.

As an entrepreneur, your time, mental focus, and energy is best spent on the overall management of your business.

As soon as it makes sense, put an attentive administrative support team in place to make sure the day-to-day tasks are covered.

You will find that when you delegate certain tasks to an administrative support team, you will get more done in less time, which will free up your focus for more important tasks.

Being an entrepreneur can feel like a solo act much of the time, which is why it is imperative to have great support in place. Five areas of support you should look into include accounting, legal, technology, and administrative. Investing in the right kinds of support will help you maintain and grow your business.

Need a hand with your business brand? Call Kim Speed at Purple Moon Creative today!