I’m a huge believer in focusing on what you do well and know best and the areas you personally want to grow and develop. But let’s face it, you can’t be good at everything and you have to rely on others to help you build and grow your consulting business for long term success.

It was only a few years ago that most of us looked at outsourcing as an expensive way to get someone else to help you to achieve a desired result. If you were the contractor and good at what you did it was essentially a gravy train. Even if you weren’t great you still managed to get by providing average services to smaller organisations at a lower price.

Further to this, most of us only looked at outsourcing large jobs or projects because this is what the large organisations did and have been doing so for a long time. Some industries are still operating with this very ‘old school’ approach, but while they take the time to get on board, it gives us smaller players an opportunity to take advantage of what is a fast growing and rapidly accepted approach to business.

I’ve been outsourcing small scale jobs for around 18 months now and the more I outsource tasks, the more I want to outsource more! One of the first was our logo design when we rebranded BRS, I launched a $300 competition, and got over 500 design entries over a 7 day period. This in comparison to our original logo we got designed locally where we received around 15 designs for around $2k!

It isn’t just the price that is appealing, the turnaround times with technology now is just as enticing. Take yesterday for example, before I left to pick my children up from school I posted a brief summary of some illustrative design work I wanted to have done for some marketing material. An hour later when I returned home I already had over 30 applications to review and some had already provided me with examples of what they could do for me. So 1 hour and $50 later I had my six designs prepared and the project was closed!

Fabulous isn’t it……technology is allowing us to change how we do business and who we do business with. It has opened up a world of possibilities for businesses to access resources globally. Initially I found that these contractors were typically from under developed countries, and I was concerned about their level of English and reliability. But this has also changed; their English skills both written and verbal are very high quality and they are prompt and responsive.

So whether you are looking to outsource using full time virtual assistants, short term contractors or for ad hoc random projects I would definitely recommend you look at going online. Outsourcing has and continues to change how we do business and the best part is there are no strings attached!