Virtual Done Well founder Rob O’Byrne talks with Paul Blackburn from Beyond Success about how outsourcing can help small businesses grow.

Rob: Hi, this is Rob O’Byrne, founder of Virtual Done Well. I’m here at a fantastic event with Greg Cassar, but this is not Greg Cassar. A lot of you might recognize this; this is Paul Blackburn from Beyond Success. Paul and I were just chatting about Outsourcing and how entrepreneurs use outsourcing to help grow their businesses. Paul, you were mentioning you actually outsource stuff yourself, what sort of tasks?

Paul: Typically, it’s the sort of thing that we need done on a regular basis, and we need it done quickly and we need it done without us having to do it. So that might be building websites, that might be linking pages, it could be simple ads, mapping out schedules. We do a little bit of our accounting clippings, typically we will photograph a receipt when we go to a restaurant and we just text that off, text that to the people in the Philippines who do it, if they’re in the Philippines. Because not many could have done it, our staff do that, but it’s kind of at the end of the month, we get back a spreadsheet, it’s got all the expenses listed, sometimes we’ve got to fill in one or two because it’s not obvious. That’s a lot better than doing the whole thing ourselves. Outsourcing for us can give 80% of the tasks done without us being there.

Rob: Do you know I think it’s almost the secret sauce, it’s not just for small businesses I mean your business is not small. But I think people do try to run their businesses lean, effective and grow quickly. To me, it’s kind of a noggin, isn’t it?

Paul: It is a noggin. And for people, yours and my age, it’s not an obvious way but because we come from a background of important people and the size of your business is quite often reflected in the size of your team. There are days the size of the business is reflected more in the size of your team than you have offsite.

Rob: That’s right.

Paul: It makes sense and we use it in other things. We don’t have a lawyer full-time, unless we’re a huge corporation, so we’re used to getting the accountant to do a particular job and then they go away, same with our lawyers, doctors, all those sort of things. We outsource our healthcare, we outsource our legal team, we outsource our accounting, we outsource other things and we don’t pay four hundred bucks an hour.

Rob: That’s right, just makes perfect sense. I should just give Paul a plug while we’re talking. If you’re watching this and you’re a business owner, Paul runs some fantastic events which help you with mindset and being more successful in your business.