A few weeks ago, we hosted a Meetup about how our agency outsources work – I got a number of objections. Before I get into the guide, I want to address them.

Objection 1: Low cost labor = low quality work

Yes, if you’re paying someone $3/hour, you’re going to get what you pay for. You’re not paying them to think – you’re paying them to do. Offshoring fails when you give them too much responsibility without enough information.

Objection 2: You’re hurting the US economy, you should be hiring Americans

When you’re first getting started, your biggest asset is your time. Your time only goes so far – employees can help to scale your time and maximize outputs.

Americans are expensive – I used offshore labor as an interim solution while we were building revenue. We now employ 8 Americans and are hiring more each quarter.

Our local employees would not be here without our offshore employees.

It’s a little known fact that the biggest agencies in the world have massive offshore teams. SapientNitro sold for $3.8 Billion in 2014 – a large reason for this was their team in India that would help reduce operating costs of the acquiring company (Publicis).

As with any merger of the size of the Sapient-Publicis marriage, the participants are touting the potential for cost cuts, in part by relying on Sapient’s production operations in India. “AdAge”

Outsourcing is a part of running a profitable agency. This guide will walk you through how to do it properly.

Part 1: Types of outsourcing available to you. Part 2: What you could potentially outsource (examples of how we offshore work). Part 3: How you can find, train and hire the right offshore people to help you out.

1. Types of outsourcing available to you

“Outsourcing” is often misconstrued so I put together a simple chart to break down the pros and cons of different types of labor:

Employee / Contractor Benefits : Productivity, expertise, control, growth, overall happiness

: Productivity, expertise, control, growth, overall happiness Drawbacks: High costs (salary, training, management, etc) Freelancer Benefits : A specialist (1 person) in the task you need, job based and easy to let go

: A specialist (1 person) in the task you need, job based and easy to let go Drawbacks: Higher cost (in short term), communication / deadline management (often remote workers)

Outsource

Benefits :“Experts” (company) at the process you need done (i.e. payroll, accounting, SEO, etc), project based and easy to let go

:“Experts” (company) at the process you need done (i.e. payroll, accounting, SEO, etc), project based and easy to let go Drawbacks: You’re on their terms, communication, high cost, long term contracts

Offshore

Benefits : Low cost “expert” in whatever you need, full time control, easy to let go

: Low cost “expert” in whatever you need, full time control, easy to let go Drawbacks: Communication (language), time difference, market perception

We don’t “outsource”, we “offshore”. In other words, we don’t push off entire processes. We find, training and manage our own team offshore that supports us full time. Now, let’s talk about what you can offshore.

2. What you can potentially outsource A few notes to help you understand what you can offshore: Unless your business runs completely offline (which is rare), you can pretty much outsource any online activity. We like to outsource time consuming activities social media, content creation, graphic design, email management and more. If you find yourself doing anything more than once, start thinking about how you can get it off your plate. Repeatable tasks can be easily built into a step by step checklist and passed to someone else to manage. These should be the first items you push off. Understand your industry and the important actions needed to acquire and manage customers. High impact items should be kept in house, time consuming low-impact tasks should be outsourced. Outsourcing works best for tasks based on execution, not planning and strategy. You want to outsource items that require time consuming work, not decision making. In the next section, we will cover the items we offshore and exactly how we do it.

3. How to outsource work properly