Communicating Effectively Saves Time & Money

Mastering communication is the most profitable investments one can make when considering education. As Peter Drucker stated, in regards to the new information worker, the most valuable asset a worker brings to a company is the ability to clearly communicate with others that may not share his/her own ideas and ideals.

Picture this: you can hire a very talented designer in the U.S. for $40-55 per hour. She is almost as talented as the Indian designer that charges $10-15. But because of cultural differences and a lack of clearly stated goals, the Indian designer’s project outcome is miles apart from what you had envisioned.

If you’re able to describe terms and milestones extra clearly, and specify details with attention, even if it takes more of your time initially, you’d end up saving $30 per hour.

As the projects become more expensive, and the number of pieces involved increase, those $30 per hour quickly become $130, $300, or even $1000 per hour. If you’re able to describe exactly what you want and exactly what each piece involved needs to do, you save incredible amounts of time and money by avoiding back-and-forth corrections and revisions.

The same applies to every aspect of your life – imagine if your wife complains that you’re working too late one day; you reply, in an angry tone, that you’re working late to pay for her day at the Spa. Now, you’re both clearly upset and guess what – both wrong. As a good communicator, you need to be able to understand the message behind the message – she really wants your company/she is really tired/she is jealous – and knowing so makes your answer  more suitable – “I totally understand honey – I’ll make it up to you tomorrow”.

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• One Tough Challenge – Knowing When And What To Outsource

Knowing what and when to outsource can be very tricky

I have to be honest – I’ve had really bad experiences when hiring outsource workers. Like really, really bad ones.

Go Cheap, Go Chinese!?

At first, I thought I should look to China and get the cheapest labor I could find and that they’d still be really good.

NAHHHH! It blew on my face – huge communication barriers, mostly my fault, put a stampede on my project as I was unable to pass my vision to them in a manner that they’d get the concept.

Plus, the 12 hour time difference doesnt help at all – I had to stay awake to make the meetings and that would really screw my day.

Then I realized there’s a reason they’re so cheap – the technical part came out decent (they really know their stuff), but the part that required finesse, failed miserably. Again, my responsibility to make sure they got it.

Outsource Much?

Here’s another issue I had to face head first since the beginning (and that still confuses me sometimes):

1. Should I outsource even though I dont really have the margin to cover the outsourcing cost, just to free my time in order to focus on big picture? Or..

2. Should I keep my margins high by doing most of the work myself and saving outsource hours for bigger projects?

The thing with option TWO is this: how would I close bigger projects if I’m stuck doing small work?

So what’s the solution?

Outsource as much as you can – but KNOW what to do with your time.

Dont hover over the outsourcing people when you should be focusing on more important things. In other words, letting them do the minor things means NOT thinking about the minor things – so give’em instructions, strict checkpoint deadlines, and move on.

Last tip: sometimes softwares can be the best outsourcers – for example:

ViralUrl email marketing allows you to save time and money when building a list of subscribers. The Synnd software is a social media marketing robot – that can save HOURS of work. And the right plugin can save you tons of SEO time – try Jeff Johnson’s free traffic plugin to start.

BIG ONE – if you know any good outsource/freelance agents – PLEASE post their contact info on the comments. I’m always looking for new people to work with.

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