Writing my very first blog post ever! Pat has been doing an awesome job so far designing all of our sites and keeping the blogs updated. I think it’s time I put in a few words as the other and only team member of LOLer Apps.
It seems so long ago that we came up with the idea for our first iPhone app while golfing on a beautiful sunny San Diego day. So we thought we had this great idea for an iPhone app, but now what? Pat is an architect / internet marketing expert and I’m a software developer of 10 years. Sounds perfect right? I would develop the applications and Pat would lead the way in marketing. We had a different plan though.
This was around the time I had just finished the book The 4-Hour Workweek By Timothy Ferriss and I had been inspired. The part about outsourcing your life and living anywhere in the world really struck a chord with me. Here is a little excerpt taken from the book about outsourcing your life that is really interesting.
With this in mind, outsourcing the development of our application was the only way to go. I was not at all familiar with Objective-C, iPhone’s programming language, so it would have taken some time to learn. Sure I could pick up a book, read a tutorial and try to get the hang of it, but I knew that it would take me 2 to 3 times as long to finish an application as opposed to hiring someone who was already familiar with the language. There would be hours wasted on forums trying to figure out a little quirk of the language that would have been cakewalk in Java or PHP. It’s nice to learn new programming languages but frankly I don’t feel like it is worth my time anymore when I can hire someone on Elance from across the world for a fraction of the price. So that is what we did. We posted our application on Elance, picked a developer and got our first LOLer Apps project, iPopIt! started.
Aside from the application development we also outsourced all of our graphic designs to a really great artist we found on 99designs.com. We are also preparing to outsource our marketing needs (more on that later). We feel that no matter how awesome you think you are at something, there will usually be someone out there more qualified, more experienced and more than happy to do the task at a cheaper per hour rate than what your time is worth. With that in mind we were able to outsource all of our needs and work on 3 LOLer Apps applications at once, and that is not considering the other individual projects that both Pat and I have going.
Currently, I am addicted to outsourcing. I love being a project manager and how cool is it to say that you have people doing work for you around the clock in Pakistan, China, Indonesia, and Minsk, Belarus. It allows me to work on so many different projects at the same time and gives me the freedom to work when I want, where I want. I don’t know about you guys but working 8 hours a day for someone else’s company really drained the creative juices out of me. Now that I’m on my own I find myself thinking of new and creative ideas all the time! So what are you waiting for? Have a great idea? There are people around the world that are waiting to make it happen for you. Just remember to check out Pat’s 10 outsourcing tips before you start.
As always, comments are welcome 
