We’re talking about outsourcing.
And man, do I have some crazy stories to tell:
March 2009 – I spend about 2,000 hours training a new assistant, and he repays me by immediately vanishing like a fart in the wind.
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June 2009 – I fire 5 full-time outsourcers in a fit of rage, and close down a successful website that has 50 people paying $297 per month for traffic services.
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$10,500 a month (after expenses) down the tubes…
I ended up doing the final month’s work myself, and then canceling all the customers because I simply couldn’t manage the staggered deadlines.
I suck at project management.
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August 2010 – Another one bites the dust. I found out that the India-based company I was using was routinely over-billing me. I’m terrible at math, even worse at accounting… And only caught it because one of my friends mentioned that he had been suckered by the same company.
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January 2011 – A programmer flat out disappears with $1500 bucks and the source code for one of my scripts. I still haven’t heard a word from him, which is good… Because if I find him I’m going to beat him to death with a computer keyboard.
The list goes on and on…
The endless stream of programmers, assistants, and designers that I’ve fired, hired, pulled the plug on…
The bottom line is that outsourcing can be a GIANT pain in the ass.
It doesn’t HAVE to be though.
No matter what business you’re in, or what your goals are, outsourcing can work for you.
But first, you have to clearly understand what sort of person you are.
You need to outsource to your STRENGTHS.
This simple-sounding little bit of wisdom helped me finally crack the code and turn outsourcing into something easy and profitable.
Once I embraced the fact that I HATE managing people, and SUCK at accounting, and DESPISE project management…
It became apparent that for me to be successful with outsourcing, I was going to have to do it my way.
In small, bite-sized chunks.
I call it “micro-outsourcing” and it works like crazy.
I’ll be giving you some examples that you can use in your own business tomorrow…
But first, read this:
http://www.erik-recommends.com/outsourcing
Source Control by David Walsh is hands down the best outsourcing course I’ve ever read. The book is over 150 pages long and I read it from front to back in one sitting.
Then I read it again.
I give it my highest endorsement and have prepared an extremely valuable bonus for those of you who take action and invest in a copy…
More on that in my next post.
Erik
