The Difference Between Outsourcing vs Out-tasking

♪ Music Playing in Background ♪ One of the reasons why people kind of stumble when it comes to outsourcing is they first approach it like out-tasking. So I want to just create a little bit of distinction here between out-tasking versus outsourcing. Now when I think out-tasking this is what most people do and its these one off types of tasks; you might go to oDesk or vWorker or Freelancer there's plenty of different sites where you can get out-tasking done. That's basically where you have a task you want to get done; you go and you post one specific job on one of these job boards and then you get all of the people around the world bidding at your particular task and then you obviously award the job to, you know, the most qualified or the candidate that you think is going to do the best job for the best price. Now that's what most people do, but that actually ends up being quite a lot of work because every time you want to get a task done you have to re-explain what needs to be done. And then sometimes, you find yourself in a situation where you're going 'hang on, I'm spending more time explaining the task that I want to have done, why don't I just end up doing it myself?' And, that, a lot of people have that thought process where they just think hiring an assistant or getting someone to do something it's just going to mean more work for you. But where the real efficiencies come is once you recognize which parts of your business are getting done at a regular basis and what are these core business functions that are happening. And then, once you kind of recognize what those are you want to plug team members in that continue to do those on a regular basis so they get trained up; so that you can give them feedback, so they can learn what you like and don't like. And then in time, you know, 6 months down the track, 12 months down the track you might have a team member that is just, almost, like an extension of your right hand because they've learned what it is that you like, they know the system and processes, you've documented it. And that's really where you're going to get the biggest breakthroughs with outsourcing. So that's where I want to, I suppose, create a little bit of distinction. We've got out-tasking, which is one off tasks, and then we've got outsourcing, which is more getting team a member to join your team and work with them on an ongoing basis. Now it doesn't have to be full-time, it can be part-time, but the take away here is someone that you work with on a regular basis. ♫ a young child giggles in the background ♫