How to Outsource Without Being a Ninnyhammer 5 mistakes people make when outsourcing for profit By Jason Fladlien
2 Introduction The way everyone does outsourcing is patently wrong, and this report is going to clear up these big mistakes. Following my advice will not only save you money more importantly it will save you time. If you grasp the system correctly and apply it, you will spend less time going back and forth with your outsourcers, while getting higher quality output. Finally, what I m showing you today while valuable is just the tip of the iceberg. We actually have a whole system we employ to do outsourcing from the bottom level all the way to the top. We ve struck a balance for getting high quality while keeping costs down. If you want to know more about that, go to http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-sales-letter/. Let s dive in.
3 Mistake #1 - Not Being Ultra Specific The standard outsourcing interaction goes like this: You tell them what to do. They do it completely wrong. You tell them to revise it. They fix about 10% of it correctly. You tell them to revise it again. They get about 10% more right. By the time you almost get it to what you want, they break something significant and you go back to being just half done again. If you lasted long enough to go through this process, after a long time you might get what you want. Maybe. There are two reasons this occurs. We ll focus on the second reason later. The first reason this occurs is your fault. You weren t clear enough. First, assume that anything you don t clearly specify will be wrong. That means anything you re concerned about no matter how major or minor, document it as specifically as you possibly can. Second, before you send it to an outsource worker, send it to a friend, a family member, or someone else to review first. Ask them if it was clear and understandable. Bonus points if the person you send this to is completely uninformed and has no knowledge of the specific task at hand which you d like to outsource. Lastly, documenting anything the first time is painful yet will save you tons of time in the long run. Realize that once you do it correctly once, you can use that specific instruction with a variety of outsourcers in the future.
Just make sure you document it in a way that is easy to update as you and/or your outsourcer improve the process or things change. 4 We talk about this at length at: http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-sales-letter/ Mistake #2 - You Get What You Pay For This is so patently false it s not even funny. I ve thrown a lot of money at a supposed top-notch outsourcers and gotten squat. Other times, on the tiniest of budgets, I ve gotten stellar work. If only it was as easy as paying more to get more. It s not. You get what you get. There is no reliable way of knowing what you get until you put the outsourcer to the test with a real world problem to solve and a deadline to solve it in. Now, for some people the first thing they outsource to new talent is a task that they are not actually going to use or need to use. They just have it ready to deploy as a test. The outsourcer, of course, doesn t know this. The purpose of doing it this way is you have nothing riding on the results, so you can be completely objective with your measurement of quality. Also, consider making sure you give them small projects at first, so you can quickly evaluate how they handle a project from start to finish. Our general rule of thumb is we give them 3 tasks, all of which are somewhat complex in application yet short in completion time, before we ever consider putting them on any really important job. The last thing to remember talent can go stale quickly. Just because they put in good work for you the last six months straight doesn t mean that the next 6 months will bring more of the same. Always measure their productivity and value, versus what you pay them. Hire slow. Fire fast.
5 We break down this issue more specifically at http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-sales-letter/ Mistake #3 - Organization How are you going to share, track, manage and archive the project at hand? Sadly, we have found there is no one size fits all. One thing we do know is that email is horrible, and should only be used as a redundancy. At the same time there is no one tool fits all when it comes to this stuff. For example we use a combination of Dropbox, Skype, Evernote, Github, Jira, Trello, Amazon S3, Google Drive, and more. It depends on the task. If you re working with a programmer you need to maintain what s called a version control system. Not only do they have a place to check in code, it s easy to compare it against previous versions and revert back if necessary. And to track bugs. By the way, 90% of programmers hate to do this and won t do it unless you are constantly on top of them. If you find the rare programmer who commits after every serious change, you probably have a winner. Dropbox is nice for quick and easy file sharing but it does have its limitations. For example it s a pain to do real-time collaboration. For that, we love Google Drive. The greatest thing about Dropbox though is its simplicity. So it s perfect to use in a flash. However, if you re dealing with outsourcers from places like Pakistan (which we do), then bigger files will take too long to sync back and forth. For that, we use Amazon S3. Trello is where we manage more complex projects that will have more than one outsourcer working together concurrently. You can assign a project manager, divvy up tasks, and see who is doing what, how far along they are, and how close they are to the deadline of the individual task. This is overkill for simpler projects, but a must for anything else.
We break down specifically how we use every tool for organization and project management at http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-salesletter/ 6 Mistake #4 - Outsourcing What You Don t Understand Notice I didn t say what you personally can t do. I can t write any sophisticated scripts involving PHP and JavaScript. However, I understand why a programmer would consider using PHP or JavaScript when programmatically trying to perform a task or solve a problem. I also have a good understanding of the limitations of PHP and JavaScript as well as the pros and cons of each. Before you outsource any task, take the time to first familiarize yourself with the pieces involved. For me, I go right to Wikipedia and spend about 20 minutes digging around. Then I do some Google searches and read up a little bit. Also when I work with a programmer I ask questions. Lots of them. I also research their answers to make sure it checks out or at least has some validity. On the other hand, I m great at graphic design, yet I still have to outsource it a lot of times. You think that d make it easy right? It doesn t. The problem is when you outsource something you re good at you might find it hard to communicate (see mistake #1) because you assume too much. The second problem is the person you outsource to will probably never be as good as you, and you ll want to micromanage.
The beautiful thing about programming is I can t do it so I can t get in the trenches with it. However, I m smart enough to look at someone s code and tell if what they made for me is duct-taped and frankensteined together and will break at the first real stress my customers put on it. 7 Yeah it takes time. It s time well spent. You should be able to have a somewhat intelligent conversation with anyone you outsource to when doing something, even if you personally have no clue how to do it. If you don t, then make sure hire someone you feel is really good and pay them a little extra to walk you through and educate you on why they do what they do, and pepper them with tons of questions. It s worth it. We breakdown this whole process in much more depth at http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-sales-letter/
8 Mistake #5 - Outsourcing The Wrong Stuff If you want to really stack the deck in your favor for success, here is what you need to master. Doing 95% of stuff just well enough and doing 5% of stuff better than anyone else. This better than anyone else stuff is your competitive advantage. It s how you can serve your marketplace better than your competition. For me, I m damn good at doing webinars. I will not outsource that, even though I could. In fact, others outsource the work to me for $50,000 for our webinar writing service if you re a big player, we should have that conversation as many happily pay me that fee for what I do for them. The point is I don t outsource anything when it comes to webinars - I design my own webinar presentations. I write every word on them. I handle the webinar registration copy (almost always), as well as the landing page copy of where I m going to send prospects at the end of the webinar. The only thing I outsource is the proof reading, and that is to my business partner, because I want very qualified eyes going over it. I also don t outsource the emails I send to my list. Everything else though is pretty much fair game, with rare exception. I even outsource the outsourcing on many occasions! There are certain things you should always outsource; other things you should usually outsource; other things you should occasionally outsource; and things you should never outsource. You won t know exactly what those are at first, but by being cognizant of this principle, in time you should review what you are and outsourcing, and make sure it makes sense.
The better you get the more you will outsource. This gives you more time to focus on that 5% of stuff that you personally do better than anyone else in your marketplace. That s when you win really big with outsourcing. 9 If you d like to get the full picture of every single important piece of the outsourcing puzzle, you owe it to yourself to check out http://startabusinessonline.org/members/video-sales-letter/
10 Conclusion In this report we covered these mistakes: 1. Specificity and how the less specific you are, the more time it will cost you in the long run. 2. Getting what you paid for and why what you get and what you pay for are usually two completely, non-related things. 3. Organization and why there is no single tool or project management strategy that works for all outsourcing opportunities or tasks. 4. Understanding and why you should never outsource a task you can t talk about intelligently even if you personally can t do the task yourself 5. Outsourcing the wrong stuff this is perhaps the biggest mistake people make, because they don t have a long-term vision of their outsourcing efforts. If you got a lot of value out of this free report imagine what is waiting for you if you spend just a bit of money on our complete, in-depth training on all things outsourcing here: http://startabusinessonline.org/members/videosales-letter/ It s worth checking out for sure.