What is outsourcing and why should you care?

Outsourcing is simply getting someone else to do a task or tasks for you. It can be a simple task (e.g. getting someone to stuff envelopes or do a letterbox drop for you) or a skilled task (e.g. hiring a professional web designer, accountant, writer or photographer)

Some of the benefits to you if you outsource are:

• save time as someone else does some of the work
• you gain expert knowledge in many cases
• you can potentially learn from the supplier
• you can gain an outside perspective (great as a sole trader)
• you may get a more professional result which will attract more customers
• the project is likely to be finished sooner than you could do it on top of the other tasks you are performing

Although there is a cost to outsourcing, that is often paid for with the advantages above – for example, Brad designed his own website and it took 9 months before it was ready to launch. Later he realised that he could have paid Jim to design it and it would have been launched within a month, giving Brad an extra 8 months of sales to help pay for Jim’s service.

So if you are feeling overwhelmed in your business or are desperate for another day every week, I would recommend considering outsourcing.