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Maximum Impact Solutions Limited - Reporting Solutions, Creating Answers

Reporting Solutions - Creating Answers, Crystal Reports, Dashboarding (Xcelsius) & SQL Reporting Services

The Maximum Impact Solutions Blog

April

A - Z of a Successful Freelance IT Trainer: O is for Outsourcing

I have a simple philosophy when it comes to my business, do what I am fabulous at, and anything else I do not want to do or am less good at, pay someone else.

As an freelance IT trainer, it is always tempting to do everything yourself, but there are not enough hours in the day to do this, when one thinks of all the activities a freelance trainer has to do:

Learn and keep up to date with courses
Write new courses
Adapt current courses
Do effective training needs analysis
Deliver training solutions
Invoice for training services
Market yourself
Chase up payments
Find new customers
Networking
Provide manuals
Provide post course support

At the end of the day, you are a freelance trainer, and so the best thing to do is to concentrate on what you do best and well, delivering training solutions, and anything else should be outsourced.

The main reason that freelancer's cite for doing everything themselves is cost.

They think that by doing everything themselves that it is the most cost effective way to get things done.

In real terms this is a false economy, when you consider the amount of time one has to concentrate, and possibly learn new skills, to do other aspects of the business, when your time and talents could be spent on growing the business.

As for me it anything I don't want to do or cannot be bothered to do is outsourced.

The things I outsource includes:

Website Design
Accountancy and Payroll
Printing
Marketing, and
Direct Sales

The other question one needs to ask yourself, is "How much is your time worth?"

If I take the example of the initial Maximum Impact Solutions Website, the actual cost of developing it represented 3 days of training, but I knew it would take me more than 3 days to design and program the functionality I wanted.

Plus there is the added advantage of if anything goes wrong, they are only at the end of the phone.

The other advantage of outsourcing the service is that if anything goes wrong or the service supplier does not deliver, it is relatively easy and cheap to extricate oneself from the project, and find a better supplier.

To date, with the exception of marketing and direct sales, I am still using the same suppliers from when I started 10 years ago.

Outsourcing is the cheapest and easiest way to get the most effective and best value for money services for a freelance training business.

I would like to hear your comments, experience, opinions and thoughts about this subject, please drop me a line or two below: