When DIY IT Stops Supporting Your Growth
When DIY IT Stops Supporting Your Growth
Every business owner understands the appeal of handling things in-house. Why pay someone else when you or your team can figure it out? This logic works well until your business outgrows it. The challenge is recognizing how your IT needs change as you grow from solopreneur, hire your first employees, and eventually to a small enterprise.
When you’re a solopreneur, DIY IT makes perfect sense. You handle everything yourself. It’s just an email account with some aliases, file storage, maybe a basic website. You can Google or ChatGPT your way through most problems.
As you build a small team of 5-10 employees, someone on staff becomes the unofficial IT person. They reset passwords, figure out why files aren’t syncing, and troubleshoot video conferencing issues. It’s manageable, but IT starts pulling them away from their actual job.
When you reach a large team of 15-30 employees, the cracks really show. You’re juggling subscriptions across several cloud services. Former employees still have access to accounts. Files are scattered across multiple platforms. Minor disruptions have bigger impacts.
You can muscle your way through each phase, but it gets less efficient each time. When your technology approach doesn’t match your business size, you pay in ways that don’t show up on a P&L statement:
Decreasing Productivity: Your office manager spends hours troubleshooting file sharing. Your best salesperson can’t access your CRM for half a day. These interruptions compound across your team.
Security Vulnerability: Cybercriminals target growing businesses because security is often handled ad hoc. A single ransomware attack can cost tens of thousands in recovery costs.
Slow Growth: When your technology barely keeps pace with today, you can’t explore tomorrow. Could automation save 20 hours per week? Would AI tools give you a competitive edge? Are you spending less time prospecting because you’re grown accustomed to the amount of time it takes to keep systems running?
If several of these sound familiar, your technology approach hasn’t kept pace with your growth.
Solopreneur: Basic cloud tools work fine. You can handle it yourself. You might want some expert advice from time to time.
Small Team (5-10 people): You need organized file sharing, proper password management, reliable backup, security training, and someone to call when things break. Many businesses start with an MSP here for monitoring and support.
Large Team (15-30 people): You need professional IT management, 24/7 monitoring, robust security, organized user management, help desk support, and regular strategic guidance. The cost of downtime and security incidents is too high to wing it.
Small Enterprise (30+ people): Technology becomes more of a competitive advantage. You need advanced automation, compliance management, AI adoption strategy, and a technology roadmap aligned to business goals.
The costliest mistake is using a solopreneur approach when you’re running a large team or small enterprise.
Consider this textbook example. Your office manager spends 10 hours per week on IT issues. At $30/hour fully loaded, that’s $15,600 annually spent on amateur IT support.
With a strategic MSP relationship that includes 24/7 monitoring, professional-grade cybersecurity, reliable backup and disaster recovery, help desk support, compliance assistance, and strategic guidance you’ll be getting much more value and risk management out of your spending.
More importantly, your office manager gets those 10 hours back. Your downtime decreases dramatically. Your security posture strengthens. Technology moves from being a constraint to a competitive advantage.
The shift from DIY IT to strategic IT management starts with understanding where you are and where you’re headed. If you’re recognizing some of these warning signs, you’re not behind, you’re simply at a transition point.
A conversation with an MSP doesn’t commit you to anything. It’s a chance to get a clear picture of where your technology stands, identify quick wins that could save time or money, and understand your options. Whether you’re ready to make a change today or just want to know what a potential path forward looks like, that conversation is worth having.
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