What outside help do you use to run your business? Is it limited to accounting, legal, or information technology support?

One of my employ-ees has a husband who is a painter and handyman. I use him for a lot of things; he also washes my windows and things. That's called seasonal employment. Her son is a teenager, and he helps me do all my hauling and stuff. Another employee has a teenage son who has helped me clean up the basement or get things from point A to point B. I have two friends who, if my employees are under the weather, help me by filling in at the counter. I have an accountant, but I do the payroll and all that. I'm very good with figures. I do have an attorney. It keeps the money in Racine. I bring my son in for technical support since that's what he does, and he does it "for his mom."

As much as possible, we do things in-house. We were really lucky in that a lady who worked for us for seven or eight years used to be a bookkeeper, so we only use an accountant for taxes. We do always use a lawyer, and keep one on hand in case we have a question. We don't want to guess, because guessing wrong can cost a lot more. We have some staff that have taken other jobs but they come in to help spruce everything up when we need an extra hand. We have a lot of talented people, including our web master, who do our graphics. The one service we have that we'd never do otherwise is the payroll service. I'm glad that we have one; it doesn't cost very much, and the headaches of doing it ourselves wouldn't be worth it in any way.

We use an outside printer to print our newsletters, which go out quarterly, and our various in-store brochures. We use a mail order fulfillment house to get the newsletters ready for mailing and take them to the post office. We also hire outside firms for pest control, window washing, and car-pet cleaning. I have an accountant do the corporate taxes, but I do the bookkeeping and payroll myself. We don't have a lawyer on an ongoing basis, just when we signed the lease. I take the computers to a local shop when they break, but we don't have any tech support or trainers coming in, and no consultants or display designers. I guess I do too much myself. Once, in the past, we used a graphic artist for an upscale four color magazine ad.

Because we can spread the costs over three stores, we are able to hire a few more people in-house, like a staff gardener, which makes it much more affordable. We do have an outside accountant who looks over everything, as well as an attorney. Other than that, we do pretty much everything in-house, except that we try to have a different look every once in a while. We have a lot of friends in the industry, so when they're in town we ask them to help out for the day. We pay them to rearrange the store and give it a different look. We do bring in outside technological help; there's a local firm that's been very active in trying to get our historic district going. They do all our IT support, from something as small as getting a printer to as large as setting up a network. They are invaluable.