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5 Outsourcing myths that may be holding you back

A couple years ago, I thought only the Fortune 500 companies could outsource because it included…

• ‘setting up an overseas office’,
• ‘flying back and forth’,
• ‘having long and boring live video calls’ and
• ‘talking with your overseas manager at 4 am’.

Boy was I wrong!

Nowadays, I don’t even bother to write a simple JavaScript script anymore, because it would distract me from doing what I do best: outsourcing!

Here’s 5 myths that kept me in ‘oblivious-land’ for way too long:

MYTH 1: Outsourcing costs a fortune
Nope. It could be ten bucks. Or less. Let me challenge you:

• Think of a small (computer related) task you need to do but you’re not really good at.
• Write down what exactly it is you need to do.
• Go to oDesk.com, start an account and post a fixed-price job.
• Think of the amount of hours it would take you to do this and multiply by 5. Post the outcome as the fee for this job.
• Set the deadline to today.

Within 30 minutes you’ll have at least 3 people bidding. I promise.

MYTH 2: It takes a long time to outsource
Wrong again. It could be done while you’re out to lunch. If you did what I asked you to do at the previous point, you’ll notice how fast it goes. In fact, putting the deadline of a fixed-price job to “the same day” will get you even more people bidding on your job. Because they have time to do it now.

MYTH 3: You have to be a manager to outsource
Allow me to change your thinking. Most people say ‘focus only what you’re good at’. Others say ‘focus on where you need to improvement’. I say ‘take what you’re good at but forbid yourself to do it’. Instead, find others to do it for you. This way, you:

• … still do what you love to do
• … automatically learn the things that used to need improvement
• … become a manager without even noticing it!

MYTH 4: I don’t have an outsourcing budget
Well, that might be true. But think about this. It will take you a minimum of two weeks to make a WordPress template if you’ve never done HTML before. A trained freelancer can do that in two hours. You do the math… See, you don’t need a budget, do you? You just need fifteen bucks.

MYTH 5: I need to be an expert before I can delegate
It helps if you know a little bit about the subject matter, but being an expert may actually slow you down. If you’re in the details, it makes you trust your freelancer less, resulting in too many revisions and particulars, taking more of your time and your freelancer. The key is: don’t worry. You can fix everything with another job. This is about you saving time.

Well, there you have it. Of course, these are only five myths. There is a lot more, I’s sure. Let me know what you think is missing and should be up here!

Yours,

-Efraim

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