Indie Wolf

Ok, I know it’s not the most attractive head piece one can wear, but a gardening hat is certainly the most pragmatic – all you fellow gardeners can relate I’m sure.  Nothing is more exasperating when I am working outside and all those blasted mosquitoes keep buzzing around and biting my neck and face. 

While chatting with my grandfather, who is an avid hunter, he suggested trying a hunter’s hat (I suppose the name of the hat is befitting to whatever the activity).  The wide-brimmed hat has mesh netting sewn in that covers your face and neck.  Ingenious, right?  My husband makes fun but I swear it is probably one of the best twenty bucks I’ve ever spent.

So apparently there is a new trend among the college age crowd: “mentorships.”  Much like traditional apprenticeships, a mentorship refers to one-on-one training provided by a professional in a certain field.  For example, an individual wants to work in the TV broadcasting industry; he or she is assigned a “mentor” who works in that industry and will provide comprehensive, detailed training.  A viable alternative to traditional higher education, a mentorship is not only cheaper, but can provide invaluable work experience a college student may not otherwise be able to get.

In the small business world, trying to decide whether to outsource work is sometimes a tough call - do it yourself, and save money up front, or outsource it, pay a little more up front, and save time and resources in the long run. Maybe you can tell, but I’m a bit biased towards outsourcing work to other companies that specialize in whatever it is you need to have done. I just don’t think, at least for small businesses, that it’s necessarily smart to try to learn everything, or hire someone, train them, and hope they can do a good job. Most of the time, it’s too expensive for a small company to hire a very experienced employee. When this happens, outsourcing the work to another company is the smart way to go. The programming world is a good example of this.

 There are lots of ways to convert code in the programming world. One way is to convert it yourself, or hire programmers to do it for you. In the world of small business, however, that’s an expensive way to do it. If you’re trying to, say, convert delphi, though, it makes more sense to use a company that specializes in conversions so you don’t have to try to figure it out. Converting code is so complicated that it is just not worth your time to try to figure it out. Software conversion is a smart example of outsourcing, especially since it’s so much easier than doing it yourself.

At any rate, I’m in favor of oursourcing work to save time & money in the long run. After all, if you end up saving money in the long run, you can use that saved money towards profitibility for the business.