Professionile: The Blog

As a part of this blog, I want to share what I learn while starting Professionile with other budding entrepreneurs (much like 37signals‘ SVN does) in the hope that it will help them on their path to success. This is only the first of many articles to come offering my words of wisdom (for what they’re worth). Enjoy.

When most people think of outsourcing, the knee-jerk reaction is “outsourcing bad.” I know that I, for one, have had horrible experiences with Indian tech support and cheaply-manufactured Chinese goods. And the media has had its hand in shaping our connotations of outsourcing. But this isn’t really what I am addressing here.

While I do know some entrepreneurs who have coders in India who will work for pennies on the dollar, I have always found that you get what you pay for. I have tried outsourcing simple work to India in the past and the result was sheer frustration, wasted time, and nothing to show for it. Looking back on this experience, it was actually pretty comical.

No, what I’d like to focus on here is outsourcing to other small businesses or individuals.

It can be very advantageous, both time-wise, result-wise, and money-wise to outsource. Let’s face it, we can’t be good at everything. You have your bread and butter (which better be the product you’re putting out) and then you have all these extraneous things that are necessary to do business but aren’t your primary focus.

At Professionile, that means design. I am a programmer, and as much as I would like to think I’m a good designer, there comes a time where I just have to admit to myself that design is not my forte. And it isn’t yet economical to hire a full-time designer.

Here’s the way I look at it: I do freelance web development at $50 an hour (average). Over the last few years I have had the privilege of meeting a handful of really great designers on the web and through work. I know that even if I could put out the same quality of work as they do that it would take me much longer (let’s say twice as long). And I also know from past experience that I can hire them for somewhere in the range of $35 per hour.

Using the above figures, for every two hours I choose to do design work over web development work, I forego $100 and I could have gotten the end result for $35 (because if you’ll remember, the professional designer can work two times faster than I). So for every 2 hours I spend designing, I lose $65.

If you’ve ever taken an economics class, you’ll recognize that the term for what I’ve just described is competitive advantage. The designer has a competitive advantage over me in design. And therefore, it is beneficial for me to trade (or outsource as the case may be).

And this is exactly what I’ve been doing. I built into my budget for Professionile certain design expenses, and then outsourced the design to designer-friends of mine. It has been a win-win situation. And the designs have exceeded my expectations (check out our new logo). Competitive advantage is something that should always be foremost in your mind as an entrepreneur. Sometimes it is beneficial to outsource.