Let me introduce you to David. David is an expert. He lives on a beautiful farm in Spain. David is an expert in many things: almond growing, sheep herding, and wild boar rustling are just a few.

But most importantly David is an expert Chumbos harvester.

What's a Chumbos? A Chumbos is more commonly known as a prickly pear.

The Chumbos tree grows rapidly in the southern parts of Spain, where it turns waste products (pooh to me and you) into fabulous fruit.

My husband Marcus and I went to visit David to marvel at his expertise. Now, David had told us how wonderful this fruit tasted, and I couldn't wait to try it out.

In my infinite wisdom, I grabbed a prickly pear off the tree.

But here's the problem, it's not called a prickly pear for nothing. It's prickly! It does what it says on the packet.

There are tiny pricks of excruciating pain - hundreds of them. They break off when touched and leave their length in your skin. They are almost impossible to remove as they are so fine.

You have 1000s of nerve endings per square centimetre of flesh in your finger tips. It felt like every nerve ending on mine was on fire. I threw the pear to the floor and ran around the farm screaming - followed by a cacophony of farm yard animals.

Well as you can imagine this attracted the attention of David. Did I tell you he was an expert?

Well he quickly appraised the situation (as experts do) and calmly removed the prickles. He then took me by my other hand (the good one) and introduced me to his tool.

It's a great big stick! About 6 feet long, with 6 inches of drainpipe lashed to the end to form a kind of "T".

David then proceeded to show me how you use this ingenious tool. You lean precariously over into the Chumbos trees and balance on one foot. You shove the stick into the Chumbos and hook a pear with the drainpipe. Then with a twisting action you detach a pear and throw it (in one action) onto the ground.

You then roll the pear around on the ground with your foot (obviously whilst wearing shoes) which has the miraculous effect of removing all the annoying prickles. You can then pick up the pear and with a rusty penknife (that appeared from the depths of David's pocket) you can cut open the fruit and get to the sweet bit - delicious!

David is an expert.

You should always listen to experts. They're the ones who tell you what can't be done and why and then go ahead and do it anyway.

My husband Marcus tried this not long afterwards

Unfortunately he isn't an expert!

Learning From Others

So, what can we learn from David & Marcus that helps us understand why outsourcing is really great?

It can be painful doing it yourself

When you tackle a task that you've never encountered before you may make mistakes. It's incredibly difficult knowing what's right for your business if you've never done this before. The pain can be simply wasting time - but quite often it can be the pain of wasting money AND losing opportunities. Can you afford to lose time, money and business opportunities?

You don't always get what you wanted

A poke in the eye with a sharp stick! The skills required to ensure a successful business are wide and varied. At first you'll be doing everything yourself, but as your client's requirements change and you need to adapt to meet their needs, you need to surround yourself with people who deliver results. When you develop your business yourself you only have your own resources to call upon which quite often leads to fewer opportunities for your business.

There are steps in the process

If growing a business is something new to you, you may not be fully aware of the different steps involved in the process. It's important that the steps are carried out in the right order at the right time to ensure success. There are steps in every specialist skill that a growing business requires. How can you know what they all are?

There are skills involved

You may have never even heard of some of the skills required to grow a successful business. The terminology may be strange or new. Ensuring the availability of the right skill at the right time will make sure your business will make you money or save you money.

There are tools involved

The tools may appear strange or arcane - but these are the tools used by professionals. Tools that ensure the validity of your web pages so that the whole world can see them; tools that create pictures that tell a thousand words; tools that measure the effectiveness of your hard work; and tools that manage your database of prospects, moving them through the pipeline.

You need expertise AND experience

But most importantly, you need expertise and experience. The experience to know what tool is needed and at what stage. The experience to know what strategy will work best without lengthy trial and error. The experience to know how to move prospects through your pipeline and ensure they contact you. The experience that only comes from having been there and done this before.

So, what skills do you have in-house? It's important to understand where your skills and knowledge can be used to best effect. Will your time be used at a strategic level - or will you get down to some hands-on tactics? If you don't have the skills in your own team, where will you get them from?

This skills gap needs to be thoroughly inspected. You need to be honest with yourself. This could be a costly mistake if you get it wrong.

Speak Soon,