Tim Ferriss--not the Joker--4HWW, Autograph, done by eponymousx on flickr

This outsourcing thing makes me think: we’ve Been Rubes!  Rubes!

So it’s “smart” to use OPM to build your business.  Doing-it-yourself sucks!

You’re a “sucker” if don’t leverage the hell out of your ability to work and earn.  Tim Ferriss only works 4 hours, yo.

The underlying message here is this: that there is a leveraged ratio that doesn’t but up against diminishing returns.   The more money you spend on spinning some flywheel, outsourcing routine tasks, the more of a businessman you are.  Borrowing money doesn’t mean risk I call bullshit.

The gurus croon: You shouldn’t be working that hard.  Have the ‘good life,’ relax, hire people to work for you.  Hard work is dead.   Ahem.

Outsourcing means you must work “on” and not “in” your business.  And that is a siren song.  But the gist is that people are looking to…not work “hard.”  People are looking to escape the workaday tedium and the application of effort that it takes to make something cool & beautiful.  But dude, repetitious boredom pays off.   It’s precisely what others aren’t willing to do.

Michael Gerber has his uses.  I’m not gonna discount the goodness that he’s brought into the world.  Having a path up and an idea that you have to standardize yourself is cool.   But it begets entitlement and laziness.  It takes away from the standard of excellence.  I can control the tone of voice and the amount of compassion I transmit to someone.  I can bear a burden for my clients.  A script can’t.

Throwing Money At A Problem = Loserdom Throw Heart instead.

When I read the copy for the Outsourcing Conspiracy, Brian Clark and Jon Morrow understood this.  If you’re not an owner you’re not gonna achieve that standard.  When I call people, I can always tell when I’m dealing with someone who has their ass on the line.  You can feel it.  It vibrates.

You don’t leverage yourself because you bring complexity and fragility into your life.  You have to manage people, to chase people with less spark, with a need for security over excellence.  And it’s not possible to do.   It’s got serious diminishing returns.  You might do less paperwork (drudgery), but you’ll do more stress and juggling.

What’s better?  Making $150k a year by hustling and doing the work, say on $180k in revenue?  Or making $180k on $350k in revenue?

When I look at the people I admire they don’t have the same attitude towards outsourcing.   They love their businesses.  They love what they are doing.  And they don’t avoid the work.  They become more efficient, and delegate some of it, but at the core they feel good when work is done & done right.

Getting tinfoil hatty on y’all: who wants you to have complexity?  Folks that sell financial products and services.  The more fragile you are, the more likely you are to take a loan to get you the flexibility ‘you need.’  Flexibility comes with a cost: a background stress load that is always there, and is always creeping into your life.

Flexibility is better than servitude.  The pimps and hustlers get small businesses to have to make poor, moneynow decisions because they are owned by the banks and financiers.

As for me, I’m gonna pay my entire debt off.   I’ll have–tomorrow–a sidebar with what the debt is.  I’ve cut it from $170k to just over 80.  Miles to go though.

Zoho has made the web the platform in a way that I’ve not yet seen anywhere else.  Google spreadsheets is cool because it’s got the link embedded in our gmail.  But Zoho feels like running a better, cooler version of MS office on a really bad computer.  If they get the speed upgraded, then there will be no reason to use MS office.

I tried to do a resume in google aps not long ago.  It was barely functional.

I did a resume in Zoho yesterday.

It rocked.  (I’m doing a resume not because I have any desire to change jobs.  At all.  I think a resume is something you should ALWAYS have just like you should ALWAYS go on 6 job interviews a year).

So I made mine here.     It took about 20 minutes, and it was just to learn if Zoho worked or not.  And it does, man.   I hate bashing the church of Google.  Online Docs and Spreadsheets is a REALLY cool idea, but this is just incredible.   It works as a printable resume as well–though not QUITE as slick.

Not bad for a 15 minute effort though–and it’s one that I can carry with me.

Anyway Zoho is a leg up and I’m eager to try out the rest of their products.