May 5, 2008
MYTH - Outsourcing is All About Working Less
The other day, I was intrigued by Mila Sidman’s article entitled “The Truth about Outsourcing – STOP Throwing Money Down the Drain!” that she published in her May Issue of the Internet Based Moms Newsletter.
The gist of Mila’s well-written article was that in one’s desire to reduce their workload, they may be sacrificing profits and control over their business. She mentioned the often sought after 4-Hour Work Week and how this goal may not be in the best interest of everyone, especially when they don’t have a full understanding of their own business.
I completely agree and I’m sure my Outsourcing Sweetie students are aware that you always need to:
Have a good understanding of the various aspects of your business before you outsource them. i.e. Don’t just tell someone to make you a website and let them run with it. You don’t necessarily need to know anything about design and programming, but you do need to know how you want your site organize, what functionality you need, etc.
Constantly evaluate all the functions of your business, outsourced or not. The truth is, much of what a company does in a day isn’t likely very efficient or profitable. In fact, many of us confessed to this recently. 
Always reevaluate whether or not the various activities your business is involved in are profitable and/or necessary for your online business.
If you’ve been approaching outsourcing simply as a way to work less, it’s time to get back to basics. Without understanding your business needs and constant re-evaluation, you’re throwing your hard-earned money down the drain.
By the way, if you haven’t been inside Outsourcing Sweetie yet, grab your $10 sneak peek here. Do it the right way from the beginning and you’ll not only work less, but you’ll MAKE MORE too. 
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My goal with outsourcing has never been to work less. I wish I could work more. LOL!
My goal is to grow my business. When I hire people to do things, I can be doing other things - things I’m better at or enjoy more. But the goal is growth, beyond what I could accomplish alone.
One of the myths about the 4 Hour Work Week is that Tim Ferriss means we just work on our business for 4 hours a week and spend the rest of the time sipping drinks on the beach. But Tim, and most of us entrepreneurs, work more hours than most employees — but the goal is to spent those hours doing what we are passionate about — NOT boring admin junk.
I’ve got my business down to about 6 hrs a week of admin junk that I don’t enjoy. The other 50+ hours a week is spent working on aspects of the business I love — coaching, teaching, radio show, blogs, creating new programs, marketing, networking, etc.
I guess it all depends upon how you define “work!”
~ Elizabeth
Thanks for the feedback, ladies.
Elizabeth, I think you’re right to some extent. I think now that Ferriss has his new career as an author, he’s putting in more hours than the average employee, but prior to that I bet he wasn’t. Whether he truly worked 4 hours per week, I don’t know, of course.
I definitely don’t work more than the average employee and I believe a lot of online entrepreneurs don’t either. You’re right, we get to choose what we want to and along with that power, we get to define the time-wasters in our business and eliminate them…giving us more time than the average employee pushing papers and doing other non-productive things. I think that was actually a very important point in Ferriss’s book too.
I can absolutely respect you’re happy with working 56 hours per week (with 50 of it being something you enjoy), but I’m never going back there.
Hi Alice
Not totally relevant to this post but I have been reading (and not taking action!) when you have been encouraging us to “spring clean”. At last I have done it with 2 of my websites and it was so well worth it. Nothing major, it is that old line blindness that architects suffer. Little errors that my page editor had slipped in like splitting words and inserting a paragraph.
Wish I had listened to you sooner!
Great news, Rodger!
Actually, it is still kind of relevant to this post. Even though you did the work yourself (it sounds like), you took the time to complete evaluate and modify your business for better results.
Hi Alice
Yes, I did the work myself and I am old enough and hopefully wise enough to know there is still more to learn and do
That is the goal that I try to reach with my virtual assistant service, help my clients work more efficiently so they can spend time growing their businesses.
I’ve been an OS client from day one and it’s a real push to make sure I have everything laid out each month but I get it done, then I just watch it all happen and unfold before my eyes. It’s a great feeling!
But you know, almost daily I’m adding tasks for myself to do and evaluating if I can get my VA (I have 2 VA’s too) to do it easier than me fretting over it.
One last thing to the ending of your post Alice, I AM making more money too!
Something about this really hits with me and something I really need to re-think about the way I present this to clients in my own business. I have many clients who seem to be RELYING on me to help them make more money so they can actually afford to pay me to do more work. I don’t know where this perception comes from as I don’t tell them that I will find the profit source in their business.
Often, it’s so hard to see where profit could be coming from because I only see a fraction of their business and many times there is no solid plan for tracking where they are making money and the marketing is so scattered it’s impossible to track.
Anyway, I’m going on a bit of a rant here…. and I’ll have to read Mila’s article. I think it’s a problem when clients come to a virtual assistant thinking the assistant is a ‘cash cow’ that is going to create more profits for them. That’s just not the way it works. The client really needs to take responsibility to understand their own business and their own Marketing Plan and THEN hand off projects that actually make them more money instead of just trying a million different marketing ‘tactics’ that only cost them money.
I’m no dummy to marketing, and I’m not saying I don’t help my clients but before outsourcing people really need to think about how that outgoing money is coming back to them and it can’t be just because they are ‘hoping’ to make a profit from it.
Angela
That’s very interesting, Angela. I’ve never been on that side to see that phenomenon, but of course you’re right.
It’s the same with web designers. If you hire a designer to do a bunch of work and then there is no traffic to your site, you can’t blame the designer. I know a lot of people have that mistaken belief, but I didn’t know VAs were often put in the same boat.
Yep, we definitely have to be responsible for the direction and what are the daily activities for our biz.
Every action that you do and every project you take on has an opportunity cost. It’s the cost of choosing one option over another.
You have a set number of hours every day you can work on your business. Before taking on any new project step back and take a look at the bigger picture. What else could you do with that time? Is there something else with a higher likelihood of success? Something else that will be a lot more profitable?
Understand the opportunity cost of everything you do before you do it. Make sure you’re choosing the most promising projects at all times.
All of this really comes down to the 80/20 rule. It’s about understanding which 20% of your efforts are responsible for 80% of your results and focusing more energy on those areas. Cut out the 80% of activities that do little for your business and you automatically free up that time for you.