How much easier would your life be if you could outsource all the tedious parts of your work? Outsourcing might even be the key to an early retirement, with logic that goes something like this: if your work is worth $20 per hour right now and you can pay someone else $10 per hour to do it for you, you're home free!
Unfortunately, the reality of finding the right people to work with and outsource work to rarely matches up with lofty expectations like those.
In today's post, you'll discover the method I use to find great people to outsource work to (and the big mistake I've learnt to avoid).
More...
What to Do (& What to Avoid) when Outsourcing Work
Watch the video below to discover my outsourcing method:
Links & Resources
- The "Curse of Knowledge" concept is borrowed from this book: Made to Stick (which is a book I highly recommend, by the way).
- Here's a TropicalMBA post with a great example of what documents to create and how to create them.
- In this podcast episode, Paul & myself dive deeper into the topic of managing a team of people you work with.
Process vs. People
You might have noticed that in the video, I didn't address the question of where you should actually go to find people in the first place.
No doubt, a blog post along the lines of "The Top 15 Websites to Hire Amazing Outsourcers" would probably get far more clicks and shares than this one, but it would also be utterly useless. The simple fact is that the question of where you go to find people is completely secondary.
For most jobs, sites like Upwork or Freelancer are perfectly fine. You can also often find more specialized marketplaces for specific types of tasks (e.g. WriterAccess for hiring writers).
The thing is, you can find good people and bad people, no matter where you go. What matters is that you have a very clear process. From a clear process follow clear requirements, which act as your filter when selecting candidates for the job. And your clear process also ensures that you can actually tell whether someone's doing a good job or not and gives people a chance to get to know your business, your processes and your preferences, so that they can do a good job and become more autonomous and valuable for your business further down the line.
If you have any questions about hiring and outsourcing, please leave a comment below! I'd also love to hear about your own experiences with finding good people to work with.

Shane this reminds me of the expression “success begins with getting the right people on the bus”.
In this sense the “people” don’t matter if the bus is non-functional. Having a well-oiled machine allows that journey to happen so to speak.
Anyway I can’t speak for everyone but I’d love to see a step-by-step post or video on “Outsourcing 101”. Its nothing like learning from someone who actually has done this before and can detail the do’s and don’ts.
Awesome video BTW–where the HECK are you?! :)
Hi Marc,
Getting the right people on the bus is definitely very important. It can hardly be understated, in fact. But unless you have a good system in place for them, you don’t give them a chance to shine. So you might be hiring good people or rubbish people but you’d never know the difference.
Great to see a new podcast. Yeah shortcuts don’t work everyone needs training in your own way of doing things before they can shine.
Thanks for your comment, Tim!
As Shane says, you need to lay out your operation with a SOP (standard operating procedure). This is a step by step guide to doing a certain task, that anyone can pick up and follow.
Unless you do this, you will waste a huge amount of time with outsourcers. You will also open yourself to being overcharged, if the tasks (and how long they should take) are not clearly defined.
One tip for using Upwork or Freelancer, only look at applicants who have actually taken the time to read your job description, rather than applicants who just send a stock reply.
This will usually be only 1/10 applicants.
Thanks for your comment, Yohan! 100% agree about filtering out the applicants that just copy-paste their message to everyone. That’s the first filter I use as well.
This is a time topic. I’ve created a widget in the footer inviting guest posts from my readers to crowd source content. Of course I am offering remuneration for the content. I have managed to find a good author this way who is contributing insightful posts as and when I need them. This way I can save on commissions of freelancing sites like odesk and freelancer and directly pay the author.