When I worked a corporate job, I was often in charge of purchasing decisions. At one company, my team had inherited a lot of homegrown solutions. I saw the limitations of these products and was quick to replace them if the budget allowed.  

In corporate settings, “build vs. buy” is a well-known decision framework. Companies weigh the cost of developing something in-house against purchasing an outside solution. It’s often simple math: how much time and resources does it take to maintain this internally versus what does it cost to buy or outsource?

Solopreneurs face the same decision constantly. However, the stakes are a lot higher when it’s your own time and own money as decision factors. 

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Knowing when to DIY and when to hire out is one of the most important operational decisions a solopreneur makes—and one that’s hard to figure out until you’ve been through it a few times. 

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When to DIY

Not everything needs to be outsourced. Some tasks or projects are worth learning yourself, even if the learning curve is steep at first.

The strongest case for DIY is when you’ll repeat the task often, and it touches a core part of your business. Updating the basics on your own website or maintaining your project management tool—these are things you’ll do over and over. If you outsource them, you’ll either keep paying someone else or find yourself stuck when you need to make a quick change.

There’s also value in the learning itself because figuring something out makes you a better operator. An example of this might be understanding your business’s financials. Even if you pay a bookkeeper to prepare them, you still need baseline knowledge about your numbers. If you outsource and don’t take the time to understand the output, you’ve created a blind spot in your business. 

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