We all read the book by Ferris or people posting about working 4 hours a week. And we all would love to do that. Well, not all, and actually it is possible to really love your job in a way that it is also your hobby, but it should be possible to work 4 hours a week.

If it is possible to do this all depends on what you are doing and how much you are making. In the book Ferris is selling a popular product and when you see people online talking about doing this successfully they usually are selling something discrete and easy to outsource as well.

The most difficult thing, for me is the outsourcing of my work.

Outsourcing seems very easy. You simply find someone who can do some part of your job, you agree on a price and that’s it, you’re on your way to do nothing. But that’s really not true most of the time.

When you have your own company you are used to doing things a certain way and you are probably quite a perfectionist when it comes to running things. The person you hired most likely has a completely different sentiment and most certainly doesn’t have the heart for your company you have.

So often you end up doing it yourself anyway and losing a bunch of cash in the process; so while you were aiming for less work and more money, you got more work and less money.

When someone tells he/she can do a job, often this is basically the case, but doing the job and doing the job like you expect to are two completely different things. This person doesn’t know you, doesn’t know your company and will most likely not do things the way you want them to be done. Endresult, again, is losing money, time and energy.

The right way of handling this, I have found, is to threat the person like an actual employee; training him/her, helping them to get everything worked out as you want it to be. Explaining why you want that. Making instructional videos for them. Make how-to’s and step-by-step plans to complete certain tasks.

Time you invest the first few weeks is crucial to the total time a person will remain with you. If you keep that in mind you should be fine to work with anyone. Working with people is really worth it as it makes you more scalable and allows you to focus on process and maximizing profits and efficiency instead of drowning in the details!