I was one of those people. I’m pretty skilled, with a wide range of knowledge and experience. I’m also a great researcher and a fast learner. I can figure out how to resolve a problem quickly. When faced with a task, I thought it made sense to keep my money in my pocket, and I didn’t see the benefits of outsourcing.
The result of that was an overwhelming amount of work that kept me from focusing on building up my business efficiently. I couldn’t work on improving the sales copy on the site because I had to research the best blog layouts. I couldn’t spend time writing articles because I was too busy looking up snippets of code Harry needed.
Even Harry was suffering from my perception of short-term savings. Harry spent hours frigging around with the blog, trying to figure out how to get a particular feature to work for me. He struggled with troubleshooting unfamiliar problems. He wasted time trying to install plug-ins and get them running only to have me change my mind and decide the plug-in wasn’t really going to work like I wanted it to. (Sorry, bro, many times over.)
Harry wasn’t dumb, either. He could see the benefits of outsourcing. More than once, he suggested we hire someone competent to do what we were having a hard time figuring out. He knew that every minute we wasted was a minute that the business wasn’t getting the attention it needed. He knew that to make a few dollars, you have to spend a few dollars. I did too, but I was stubborn. Hey, I could do the job myself and save the money we’d pay someone else.
The irony is that part of my job as a copywriter is convincing others to hire us and save themselves the headaches of writing copy. I point out the benefits of outsourcing a copywriter, that we can write better and faster with copy that brings in more sales. I tell potential clients that if they hire us, they can stop struggling and focus on areas of their business that truly need attention.
Finally, I caved. I put up a project on Elance and decided to test the benefits of outsourcing. I found a great website development team called Wise Choice. They were affordable, they were highly skilled and competent, and they were dead fast. What took Harry and me days of frustration, struggling and arguments to finish took Wise Choice a few hours at most. They did a way better job than either of us could, far beyond our expectations. They also saved our asses more than once (Thanks, guys!).
The benefits of outsourcing were amazing. We could relax. We could work on writing and communicating with clients. We could spend time earning money instead of wasting time that didn’t pay a damned thing. We weren’t stressed out and frustrated or overwhelmed by trying to learn something we weren’t very good at to begin with. We could apply our strengths where they would get the most results instead of focusing our energy on areas of weakness.
Sure, we paid for our project, but outsourcing the job was an investment to both our business and ourselves. Now, I don’t hesitate to hire someone else to do something they do better than I do. It pays to find the right person for the job, and the benefits of outsourcing are well worth the money.
