Small Business Owner - Safely Take the Leap into Outsourcing

As a small or one-person business, you can think of outsourcing as a test of your resourcefulness and business acumen. Can you use it to increase your effectiveness and time, while reducing costs?

Are you willing to outsource essential tasks such as bookkeeping, web-design and marketing so that you can focus on your core-competencies and passions?

I hope your answer is a resounding \"yes.\" But like most things in life, you must be willing to get moving and take the first steps.

Beyond the benefits of lowering costs, a key consideration in outsourcing is increasing the resources that you have at your disposal. You may or may not be able to afford a highly skilled programmer, lawyer or CPA in your home country, but you can certainly afford one who is from India, Bangladesh, China or Slovakia.

And these are not second-rate people. When outsourcing, you can hire the equivalent of a Stanford MBA or Harvard trained lawyer for 10% of the cost you would have to pay in North America or Europe.

What do you want to accomplish with your offshore help?

The first thing you need to do is identify the tasks that you do not have the time, energy or skills to accomplish. What are the time-suckers that are stopping you from developing your business further? What do you need to do, but do not know how?

Make a list.

Now, you must decide which functions to begin outsourcing. If you need some ideas, here are a few tasks that small businesses and sole-practitioners often outsource; web-design, payroll, forecasting and budgeting.

For example, you can have your outsourcer create a website for promoting yourself or a specific product. You could email them with changes and updates as they occur. You could have them creates excel spreadsheet for tracking expenses and income.

They could turn a word document into a beautiful PowerPoint presentation for you. They could do market research for you or even write a complete business plan or policies manual for you.

Are you starting to see the potential of outsourcing?

As a general rule, an outsourcer can do any task that does not require his or her physical presence in your office. And yes, that includes finding the top Italian restaurant in your town and making reservations for you. They could even plan you child\'s birthday party or your anniversary celebration. Think outside the box.

One last point to consider: Saving time and money is not the same thing as increasing productivity.

Take a few moments to plan the most effective things that you can do with your time as your offshore assistants help you create more of it.

Where to Find an Outsource Provider

If you are reading this article, you may be just beginning your journey into outsourcing. It\'s important that you start in a safe and effective manner. You also want to start in a place that mitigates risk as you learn the process of offshoring and how to do it.

Consider starting in a community such as elance.com where you can not only get bids on your projects, but also read the reviews of outsourcing providers who are offering their services. People do give feedback and they are generally very honest. You may find a provider that you use long-term. Or you may try several before you get a match.

You may also want to look at the business forums on craigslist.org or do search on google or yahoo for \"outsourcing\" or \"small business outsourcing.\" If your needs are highly specific, make a more specific search, such as \"accounting outsourcing. You get the picture.

Pick a small and well-defined task at first. Something that can be done in a day or less and costs less than $100. Contact several businesses and ask for a quote. After the work has been completed to your satisfaction and you have paid for it, consider outsourcing more complicated tasks.

As you get more comfortable with the process of hiring and managing outsourcers, the benefits to you will increase. As always, remember: You are the boss and you are in control. You can stop whenever you want to or need to, and you can always find another outsourcing provider.

Ryan C. Nagy, M.A. is a successful small business owner & consultant. Come see Ryan at http://outsourcingreview.org or http://www.ryannagy.com

Consider signing up for his ezine and monthly free bonuses for small business at: http://www.ryannagy.com/newsletter-and-free-videos/

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