Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Co-founder of Rise25 Media, a company that helps B2B business owners connect with their ideal prospects, referral partners, and strategic partners through a done-for-you podcast service. Dr. Weisz has been involved in podcasting for 11 years and was a senior producer for early business podcasts. He helped put all of their systems in place and helped them add volume, feature, and edify various business leaders.
Dr. Weisz has also been running his podcast, Inspired Insider, since 2011. He has featured top entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs of companies such as P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, and many more through video interviews on Inspired Insider. He also continues to run his chiropractic and massage facility in downtown Chicago and is the founder of a nutritional supplement business.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [01:52] Dr. Jeremy Weisz lists key questions for deciding between in-house and outsourcing
- [05:03] Aligning projects with core competencies and avoiding underestimating expertise
- [07:20] How does the expected workload influence the decision to outsource or keep in-house?
- [09:37] Cost comparison of in-house vs. outsourcing, factoring in the opportunity cost of non-core tasks
- [12:57] When does the urgency of project completion dictate outsourcing over in-house efforts?
- [15:19] Internal resource allocation and impact of dividing team focus on overall performance
- [17:59] What is your comfort level with delegating tasks, and how does that influence project outcomes?
- [18:54] The potential pitfalls of in-house vs. outsourced project management
- [20:11] Strategic importance of the project and whether that justifies outsourcing for long-term goals
- [21.49] How outsourcing can help build relationships with external partners and their networks
- [22:22] Impact of client lifetime value on the decision to outsource
- [27:34] Dr. Weisz discusses the risk of team members leaving and disrupting project continuity
In this episode…
Many companies struggle to decide whether to handle a project in-house or outsource it to an agency. This challenge often involves balancing core competencies, budget constraints, and internal resources. What factors should influence your decision when leveraging external expertise to improve operational dynamics and competitiveness?
According to Dr. Jeremy Weisz, several steps exist to effectively navigate this dilemma. Begin by assessing whether the task aligns with your business’s core strengths; if it doesn’t, consider outsourcing for the necessary expertise. Next, evaluate the long-term costs, including any potential hidden opportunity costs. Finally, take a closer look at your internal resources and their ability to manage the task. Sometimes, outsourcing relieves internal strain and leads to better outcomes, especially when specialized skills are required.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Dr. Jeremy Weisz, Co-founder of Rise25, about the decision-making process for outsourcing versus keeping projects in-house. They discuss key considerations such as cost comparison, the strategic importance of tasks, and how to leverage external agencies to build long-term relationships. Additionally, they touch on factors like client lifetime value, timeline management, and the impact on internal resources.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Quotable Moments:
- “Investing resources in a project is a big decision—it’s not just about time and money; it’s about future growth.”
- “Expertise is key; don’t underestimate the skill required for a project if it’s outside your wheelhouse.”
- “When assessing the volume of work, remember, what seems manageable at first can quickly become unsustainable.”
- “Cost comparison goes beyond the bottom line to include opportunity cost and impact on core business activities.”
- “Outsourcing can provide a fast track to success by leveraging external expertise and established relationships.”
Action Steps:
- Identify your business’s core competencies about potential projects: This ensures projects are a natural extension of your existing skills and resources, leading to more efficient execution.
- Evaluate the skill level and expertise required: Understanding the skill gap helps you make informed decisions about whether to train, hire, or outsource.
- Conduct a cost-benefit analysis, including opportunity costs: This provides a holistic view of expenses, helping to avoid hidden costs that could affect profitability.
- Plan projects with a clear timeline: Setting a realistic schedule prevents delays and maintains momentum, which is critical for business development.
- Assess the strategic importance of tasks: Prioritizing projects by their potential to drive business goals ensures resources are allocated effectively.
Sponsor: Rise25
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create a copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 0:00
Okay, today we’re talking about how a company should consider a decision whether to do a project in-house or to outsource that project to a specialized agency. It’s a question that you have to answer for yourself, and we have 11 questions that you must ask before you take on this project. My guest today is my business partner, Dr. Jeremy Weisz. I’ll tell you more about him in a second. So stay tuned.
Intro 0:25
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders and thought leaders, and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 0:42
Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, I’m the host of the show. And you know, every week, if you’ve listened before, I got smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. We’ve had Netflix, Kinko’s, YPO, EO Activation, Blizzard, GrubHub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos and Open Table. Lots of great episodes. Check out the archives, and you can check out more of those. And of course, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25 where we help B2B businesses to get clients, referrals and strategic partnerships with podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn more about what we do at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
Alright, we got my business partner, Dr. Jeremy Weisz here today, and we are going to be diving into the topic of, when should a company consider taking a project in house versus outsourcing that project to a specialized agency? And we’re going to be talking about it in the context of what we do, which is helping B to B companies to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships done for you, podcast and content marketing and so Jeremy, let’s just kick it off here. What are a couple of considerations? How do you want to frame this episode?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 1:52
Yeah, so we’ll go through some of the questions that we have found to come up with the right decision, and then we’ll go into a little detail. But I just want to frame this whole conversation as why this is important. Because, you know, for us or any company, when you’re thinking of investing resources, that means time and energy resources of yourself and your team, it means money. So this is a big decision. It could be a big decision whether to keep the project in-house, or to outsource it to a specialized agency. So this is it. I know John. I mean, for us as a company, and all the companies we talk to, this is going through their head, where they realize it, or whether we realize it or not, right? So here’s some of the questions.
We’ll just go through some of the questions, and we’ll discuss them a little bit further. But we did a lot of research online from others about what other companies ask, what we ask. And so here’s some of the deciding questions that we think about. One, what’s the core competency of our business, right? Is it related closely to our services, or is it outside our primary focus? Second question is, what’s the skill level and expertise required for that task? The third one is the expected volume of work of that project. The fourth is, what’s the cost comparison? Right? And it’s not just cost, just the actual money cost, but there is opportunity cost as well. Five is, what’s the timeline for the project. The sixth is, what’s the impact on the internal resources.
The seventh is, what’s the level of control and customization required for it? Eight, what are the risks associated with each option? Nine is, what’s the strategic importance of the task? Right? How’s it gonna affect the business and bring in an expert or not? And Ken is, what’s the potential for long term relationships. John, people often miss this one, someone I just talked to they didn’t, I don’t think realize, like, at least with us, how many relationships we bring to the table for them outside of just everything else. And I look at the same with partners and relationships too, and that’s a factor that we evaluate. And then 11 is, what’s your client lifetime value, right? And that factors in. Why don’t we start with one? What’s the core competency of our business?
John Corcoran 4:34
I think that there’s different ways of defining that we were just talking about, you know, like a chip maker, like an Intel you know, they can look at like, are we a tech company? Are we a chip maker? Are we a chip maker who makes a certain type of chip for a certain type of product? There’s different ways that companies can define that. You know, companies sometimes evolve and change. What your core competency is, what it was to do. It might be completely different from what it was five years ago.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 5:03
Yeah. I mean, so is the job closely related to your core competency? If it’s not, you’re going to be, you know, there’s a learning curve there. And the second is, do you want to focus on your expertise in the company and your superpower or split your time and attention. So when we’re thinking of the core competency, that’s really a key component to that, like we try and stick to our core competency when we’re bringing an outside vendor in, and that’s a major question we ask, okay, yeah. Number two, the skill level and expertise required for the task. Yeah, talk about that.
John Corcoran 5:45
And we’ve seen a bunch of mistakes, yeah? And you see this all the time, right? You know, sometimes you look at something from the outside and you think, like, Oh, we’ve, we’ve got the expertise for this. And then you get into it and you realize there’s a lot more to it than would be, you know, involved, you know, I, I’ll give you an example. I’ve been looking at replacing a HVAC system on our house, and, you know, getting into it and, like, realizing, wow, this is really over my head. You start watching some YouTube videos, you think I could handle this myself.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 6:17
And then pretty soon, you realize, I would, I never thought I could handle this.
John Corcoran 6:21
You got light, I can maybe I’m a little too, maybe a little too over ambitious, but, you know, you go down, you go down the YouTube rabbit hole, and you’re like, Oh, I could do this, you know? But then you realize, oh, okay, this is actually quite specialized. There’s a lot of knowledge that’s required here.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 6:35
I mean, look from an agency perspective, like, we know a lot of agencies, and there’s ones that only specialize, let’s say in email marketing, right for ecommerce businesses? Yeah, very ecommerce business. They could be like, You know what? I can send an email out. But when talking, we’ve run a lot of podcasts for agencies in the ecommerce business realm, and it’s like, oh, wait, do you have a, you know, abandoned cart sequence? Do you have this sequence? Do you have this sequence? Do you have that sequence? There’s like 11 different sequences that they’ve built out that can make them more money. So at first glance, like you said, it looks like, oh yeah, I could send an email out through Klaviyo on Shopify or something, but there’s a lot more that goes into it. So what is the skill and expertise?
John Corcoran 7:20
So that’s one where it’s easy to underestimate the amount of skill and expertise that could be required. And the next one is, what’s the expected volume of the work? Which is another one where people oftentimes underestimate the amount of work that would be required. Specifically, if we’re talking about the context of a podcast, it can be a lot of work, especially if you’re not used to doing this type of work on a regular basis. There’s context switching from doing the work that you normally do to switching to the other type of work. And frankly, my podcast for the first three or four years, that was the reason that I was very inconsistent with it, was because I was trying to oversee that stuff myself. It was a lot more work than I expected, and not something that I should have been handling myself.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:04
I think we were even talking on the podcast realm, talking to someone who was doing it themselves, and they kind of said, leisurely, yeah, you know, maybe we spend, like, I don’t know, the team spends 30 hours per episode. And you were like, Wait, what are you talking about?
John Corcoran 8:20
And it’s not sustainable. Like when I hear that, I say, look, you’re not going to be doing this six months from now. You know, they think they are. They think, oh, be fine, but it’s just going to grind to a halt. You’re not going to keep on doing it. If that’s the case, I had one person that told me once that they spent 100 hours of their own time on their very first episode. And guess what? They had exactly one episode that was live. It was a couple of years earlier. They’d gone live on this one episode, and then it was such a negative experience, they never put any more effort into coming up with an episode, too.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:51
Those people credit for at least tracking it, because some people don’t even track it and don’t realize how much they are spending, and how much their team is spending in there, but it goes into the volume of work. Is it a one time project? Is it a recurring need, and how does that volume affect your decision? You know, obviously, if, in our world, if you’re doing a podcast, you know, you want to, you want to keep doing it, because it builds relationships and with partners, clients and everyone else.
John Corcoran 9:24
So, the next consideration is, what is the cost comparison? So the cost between, you know, doing it in house, versus the cost of outsourcing. And you for this, Jeremy, what are a couple of thoughts on this one?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:37
Yeah, from, I mean, from a cost comparison, we all, I always factor in opportunity costs, like even for ourselves, if we’re thinking of doing something and bring in another agency to help us, we have lots of agencies that help us. Same thing with companies we’re talking to. So there’s a big opportunity cost, right? And so I was talking to. Someone actually earlier today. And it’s like, maybe, you know, quote, unquote, maybe they save a bit of money with their internal team doing it. But obviously some of those other things, like, the expertise is not there. Like, obviously, we’re specialized in what we do. And if you’re talking to an agency, they’re specialized.
So the expertise isn’t there. So not only is it, it’s somewhat comparable. It wasn’t like when I was talking to them. It actually wasn’t that much more for us to just take everything off their team’s plate and deliver a higher quality service and focusing on the strategy and ROI it seemed like a no brainer, and the cost comparison is also an opportunity cost, right, which is now you’re spending time on something else instead of serving your current clients. And again, goes back to the core competency. If this is not your core competency, then the cost is going to be higher in general, because your team’s going to spend more time and energy on something that should take a shorter amount of time regardless.
John Corcoran 11:08
So even if that’s a quote, unquote fixed cost because it’s a full time employee, it’s costing you more because they’re spending more of their time on that rather than they could be spending time on other things. Let’s move on to the next one, which is number five. What is the timeline for the project? Is this something that you don’t care about when it gets done? Is it something that you want to get done in q1 q2.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:31
You know, you’ve been talking to someone recently, um, that said, oh, yeah, we’ll get it out. And then six months later, exactly, it happens all the time, you know.
John Corcoran 11:41
And oftentimes the first question I ask people is like, how long have you been thinking about doing this thing right? And it’s oftentimes three years, four years, five years, you know, they’ve been thinking about doing it. And the reason that it doesn’t come from fruition is simply because they leave it in that area, or they don’t bring in those outside expertise that can get it done, you know, so quickly. We were just talking to a team member who mentioned that they had their bathroom redone in four days. And I was like, four days, oh my gosh, that’s crazy, you know. And a lot of times, you know, you might be thinking about something like that, but it could be done in four days. You know, if you want something to be done quickly. It can get done quickly, but you have to bring in outside specialists in order to do that.