You’re launching a business. You need to know how to navigate outsourcing non-essential functions.

You have a great idea, but no idea who to hire to get everything going.

Need a logo? Hire a designer, right? Only if you have a ton of cash to spend on this project. Use this instead.

Need a landing page? Gotta hire a developer, right? Nope. Use this tool instead. ($200 for one year – Lander)

Now you have a logo and a landing page without hiring a crazy expensive firm or some guy in India who you can’t really communicate with, so everything sorta gets lost in translation… but without ScarJo to help you.

This is where things get tricky. Time to test the idea. See if people actually want whatever you are selling. And if you think you aren’t selling anything, quit now because you’ve already lost.

How do you go about that? Talk to your friends? No. They are biased. One of two ways. Neither will help you.

You need to get this to strangers. But cold calling sucks. For everyone. How do you reach them?

Hire a growth team. They’ll create ads and push them to the right demographics and setup analytics to track everything. They’ll do rapid testing. They’ll change the landing pages for you (A/B testing – it’s important).

When something works – they’ll ask you to put a sizable amount of cash into the ad spend and watch the conversions rise. Then, if they have a developer or two on the team, they’ll build you a full site with more functionality as more interest in the product/service arrives.

This way, you don’t blow through $150k in 3 months like some gullible entrepreneurs did at a Los Angeles-based “studio” (it’s now defunct) and walked with nothing to show for their money and effort.